LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



Man of Galilee 



BY 



ATTICUS GJ^HAYGOOD 



Lord, to whom shall we go but unto thee ? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life. — Shnon Peter. 




NEW YORK: HUNT &- BATON 

CI NC INN A TI: CRANSTON «£r^ STOJVE 

1889 



T^Ts^S 






Copyright, 1889, by 
ATTICUS O. HAYGOOD, 

New York. 



x)^- 



^SHIN^ 



TO 

XHE^ **e:]viory boys," 

WHO WERE WITH ME IN THE OLD COLLEGE IN 1876-84, 
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS 

BY ONE WHO LOVES THEM ALL. 

THE AUTHOR. 
Decatur, Ga., AJ>ril 9, 1889. 



Prefatory. 



Decatur, Ga., April g, 1889. 
My Dear Lundy : 

You and many others of my students at Emory 
of the years 1876-1884 have often asked me to put 
into permanent form the thoughts concerning " The 
Man of GaHIee "— '' Jesus of Nazareth '* — I brought 
before you when we were together at the old col- 
lege in Oxford. In this little book I have had the 
boys in mind all the way through, as if they were 
before me in my lecture-room in '' Seney Hall/* 
Many times the very faces of the boys seemed to 
be about me as I have written, and I could almost 
hear them ask me questions as they used to do. 

Scattered about the world now — not a few of 
them in distant mission fields — my heart follows 
them every one, and these pages, which would 
never have appeared but for them, bear them the 
assurance of an interest in them that can never die. 
Your friend, 

Atticus G. Haygood. 

The Rev. Lundy H. Harris, 

Professor in Emory Collegey Oxford, Ga. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 
Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus ? 9 

CHAPTER II. 
*' No Dramatist Can Draw Taller Men than Himself" 18 

CHAPTER HI. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Neither Good nor Great 

Enough 24 

CHAPTER IV. 
Is Jesus an Ideal Jew of the Time of Tiberius ? 35 

CHAPTER V. 
Jesus and Myths 00.. 42 

CHAPTER VI. 
Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature 51 

CHAPTER VII. 
His Method of Thought Differences Him from Men 60 

CHAPTER VIII. 
** Never Man Spake Like this Man " 68 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Son of Man and Sin 80 



8 Contents. 

CHAPTER X. 
The Magnitude of the End He Proposed and Set About. ... 92 

CHAPTER XL 
Never Man Planned Like this Man 97 

CHAPTER Xn. 
Jesus Neither Theologian nor Ecclesiastic 109 

CHAPTER XHL 
' ' Jesus Christ Took the Way of Perishing " 116 

CHAPTER XIV. 
His Grasp upon Mankind 123 

CHAPTER XV. 
What Jesus Claims and Demands 133 

CHAPTER XVL 
Jesus the One Universal Character ,0 141 

CHAPTER XVIL 
The Christ, the Son of the Living God 148 



THE MAN OF GALILEE. 




CHAPTER I. 

DID THE EVANGELISTS INVENT JESUS? 

HO and what was Jesus of Nazareth ? In 
this question and its answer is involved 
the whole of what we mean by Chris- 
tianity. 

If it could be demonstrably proved that there 
never existed such a person as Jesus, Christianity, 
as a living force, would cease from the earth. There 
would indeed be a history, a literature that would 
interest people according to their tastes ; but there 
would be no heart- changing, world-up-lifting sys- 
tem of vital and vitalizing truths and corresponding 
duties, binding upon the conscience of every human 
being and inspiring hope in every breast. 

In the discussions we are about to enter nothing 
will be assumed except what is too obvious to 
question. It will not be assumed that the little 
books called ** gospels *' w^ere inspired at all. You 
will not be asked to consider any miracle, said to 



10 The Man of Galilee. 

have been performed by Jesus, as making proof of 
his divinity. Nor will I quote proof-texts to show 
that he is divine. 

The first question to ask is this : Did such a per- 
son as Jesus is described to have been ever really 
exist? Did Jesus really live in Nazareth and work 
in Joseph's shop ? Did he, for some three years 
and six months, go to and fro among men teaching 
them ? Was there, in the days of Herod and Pilate, 
a Jesus as surely as there was a Caesar ? 

This much is certain : we have in these four little 
books — compared with what is every day written 
about common men how small they are ! — attrib- 
uted to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, a most dis- 
tinct character, known to us and known to history as 
Jesus. Whether the men whose names the little 
books bear, or some other men whose names are 
lost to us wrote them, matters not in the least. 
What books contain is more important than the 
question of authorship. No matter who wrote 
them, the character we know as Jesus is in the 
books ; there can be no dispute about this ; here it 
is, before our eyes. And this character is as surely 
in history, in literature, in men's thoughts, in all 
that we mean by C ..stian civilization, as it is in 
the writings of the four men we call evangelists. 

Not only do we have the character, but we see 



Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus? 11 

clearly that it is a character absolutely unique. It 
is unique in many respects, but pre-eminently in this 
— it is the one perfect character that has appeared in 
the world that ever had a place in the history or the 
thought of men. It is said that the volatile Vol- 
taire once compared Jesus to Fletcher of Madeley, 
thinking him as good a man as the Nazarene. But 
the light Frenchman understood neither the one 
nor the other. As one said of an unfit biographer 
of Fletcher's great friend, John Wesley: '' He had 
nothing to draw with, and the well was deep." 

Is there one solitary defect, the very least, in this 
character that we find in the evangelists ? Is there 
one weak spot, or suggestion of fault, or intimation 
of infirmity, or suspicion of failure, the slightest, to 
do and to be what was right for him to do and 
to be? 

Look at him as he is set before us in these brief 
writings ; look, reverently if you will, but with 
open and fearless eyes, to see all that may be seen 
of him. What least flaw can be found in him ? Is 
there the least possible shadow of reason for revers- 
ing, or so much as questioning, Pilate's verdict, 
^* I find no fault in him?*' Is there in all history 
one other character of whic.. ;ou can say or believe 
as much ? Is there any other you are willing to 
name second to him ? 



12 The Man of Galilee, 

If you are making an estimate of any other 
character — whether of a real person, as a sage, a 
statesman, or a philanthropist, or of some imagi- 
nary person, as the hero of a story — how would you 
judge him most severely? You would compare him 
with Jesus. We must remember that it is to Jesus 
we owe those higher standards by which we judge 
men in our times. Christ-likeness expresses the 
highest ideal of character we are capable of con- 
ceiving. 

Some writers, as you know, have denied that Jesus, 
the Jesus of the four gospels, did at any time really 
live, a man among men. Of far more importance 
than any mere denials in books is the failure of 
many thousands to realize in their inmost con- 
sciousness that the story of the evangelists is the 
record of a life actually lived. 

We will demand of those who deny or doubt 
that Jesus really lived to account to us for the ex- 
istence of the character. This they must do, for 
the existence of the character they cannot deny ; it 
is here before men's eyes, as it is in men's thoughts 
and lives. This character is not in these little books 
only ; it is in a hundred thousand books. It was 
not only in the minds of four writers long ago ; it is 
in the minds of millions of men, women, and chil- 
dren to-day. If any deny or doubt the historic 



Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus? 13 

Jesus, let them explain to us how this character, 
flawless and perfect, ever got itself into the thoughts 
of men and is now in history, literature, art, law, 
custom, in human life itself. 

Some have tried to explain the existence of the 
character, while denying that Jesus really lived 
among men, by telling us the evangelists invented 
the Jesus of these stories. They tell us Jesus is 
the product of the dramatic genius of the four men 
whose names go with the brief account we have of 
him, his words, and his deeds. It would not alter 
the case to deny that these four wrote the books, 
and to say some other writers whose names we do 
not know invented the character. 

Let us look carefully and fairly at this view^ of 
the subject. If it be reasonable it may be true ; if 
it be true we need not fear to accept it. Nothing 
in Jesus calls on men to profess to believe what to 
them is not the truth ; nothing can be more un- 
like him than to use words without convictions. 
We cannot do otherwise than '* hold fast that which 
is true'' to us ; indeed we cannot hold fast to any 
thing else, though it be called truth by never so 
many voices of men. 

The theory that Jesus is an invention is another 
way of saying that he is the hero of a romance, a 
creation of constructive imagination. It involves 



H The Man of Galilee. 

this: four Jews at about the same time, among a 
people not given to making books of any kind — least 
of all books of the imagination — were seized with 
desire to write books, and thus it came about that 
they have given to the world, as the product of 
dramatic genius, this character of Jesus. As, for 
illustration, it may be said, in a sense, that Bulwer 
invented the '' Margrave '' oi A Strange Story, 

Let us inquire into the antecedent probabilities 
that these men would naturally attempt to construct 
and put into form such a work of the imagination ; 
nay, more : whether they were likely to attempt any 
dramatic work at all. 

We are not left to guesses in considering such 
questions. It is historically certain that the Hebrew 
mind in ancient days was not given to this sort of 
literary work. The Greek mind gave dramas to the 
world, matchless of their kind ; the Hebrew mind 
gave none. There is nothing in Hebrew literature 
of the period assigned to Jesus, of the period suc- 
ceeding him, or from the time of Moses, to indicate 
so much as a tendency to such creations of the 
imagination. 

We have much to judge by, and there can be no 
mistake. We have the Old Testament Scriptures, 
the apocryphal books, the comments of the scribes — 
called Targums — upon their sacred wTiting, the lit- 



Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus? 15 

tie book called ''Acts of the Apostles," the other 
New Testament writings, and the works of Josephus 
as specimens, showing the trend and method of 
Hebrew literature. 

The Hebrew mind in ancient days was not given 
to art, but to morals. The Jew did not develop art 
impulses till he had become cosmopolitan and 
Christianity had changed the world. In ancient 
Hebrew literature, whether in plain prose — in his- 
tory, statute laws, or proverbs ; whether in psalms 
or other poetry; whether in the magnificent im- 
agery of the prophets, we find that morals, not art, 
inspire the thought and form the expression. 
There are neither paintings, nor statues, nor 
dramas. Their architecture was borrowed from the 
Phenicians ; they were original in their ideas of 
morals and in their laws and customs relating to 
rights and wrongs. Their literature is dominated 
by religion, and not by art, in any of its manifold 
developments. 

Read it all — all ancient Hebrew literature ; we 
have history, laws, proverbs, poetry, prophecies, but 
we have no dramas. 

You may cite me to the book of Job. This is 
more like a drama than any other. If this be al- 
lowed, it is the one exception. But it belongs to a 
period very remote from that of the evangelists, 



16 The Man of Galilee, 

and if it be a drama it is, as may be shown, such a 
work as a Hebrew might have written. But the 
story of Jesus is not such a drama as a Hebrew of 
his period might have written, allowing, what is not 
true, that at some other period it might have been 
imagined by a Hebrew, or any other writer of 
books. As to the book of Job, it is in harmony 
with Hebrew characteristics and with the time and 
country in w^hich its scenes are laid. The books of 
the evangehsts are not in harmony with them ; 
they contradict them all and utterly. 

Consider well the four little books of the evan- 
gelists that we call gospels ; study them just as you 
would any other ancient writings. See what is in 
them, that you may know what manner of men they 
were who wrote them. Reject them all, if there be 
reason, but look carefully to this one thing — whether 
these writers were given to dramatic creations, or, 
indeed, had faculty for such work. There is evi- 
dence enough in their writings that Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John were not of the literary and book- 
making classes. They w^ere of the common people ; 
unlearned and unskilled in literature, laboring and 
business men, trained as laymen. Their lives were 
very far removed from the occupations and influ- 
ences that dominated the very feeble literary instinct 
that belonged to that period of Hebrew literature. 



Did the Evangelists Invent Jesus? 17 

I conclude that it was antecedently as improbable 
that the evangelists would have attempted the pro- 
duction of any drama whatever, as I will show that 
it was impossible, had they made the attempt, for 
them to have invented such a story as they tell us 

of ^^The Man of Galilee." 
2 



18 The Man of Galilee. 




CHAPTER IL 

''NO DRAMATIST CAN DRAW TALLER MEN THAN 
HIMSELF/* 

HE doctrine I set forward concerning Jesus 
is this : Such a person must have actually 
lived, as the condition of conceiving such 
a character, for the reason that the power of cre- 
ating such a character was never in the Hebrew 
mind, or any other. 

At this point let me tell you how my thoughts 
were directed in the lines the argument takes in 
this discussion. 

In the month of April, 1861, while a pastor in 
Sparta, Ga., I was reading one of Hugh Miller's 
hodk?>. First Impressions of England and Its People. 
The writer of this to me entertaining and instructive 
volume was comparing, on the occasion of a visit to 
the grave of Shakespeare, the great poet, Sir Walter 
Scott and Charles Dickens. Hugh Miller said (I 
believe the quotation is substantially correct ; I have 
not seen the book in a long time — it was loaned to 
some of you) : '' No dramatist, whatever he may 
attempt, can draw taller men than himself.'* 



What No Dramatist Can Do. 19 

I closed the book and said to myself: ''Then 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not invent 
esus. 

It was not till February, 1864, that the thought, 
which I often brooded, was brought into a dis- 
cussion. While in camp as a missionary chaplain 
with Longstreet's corps of the Army of Virginia, 
near Greenville, East Tennessee, I sketched rudely 
enough, one snowy day, the outlines of an argu- 
ment, using it one night, soon after, in a sermon 
preached in the First Methodist Church, Atlanta, 
Ga. In the course of years it grew upon me into 
a series of lectures delivered to senior classes in 
Emory College. It outgrew the limits of a sermon 
at Monticello, Ga., August, 1878. My old students 
and certain life -long friends will pardon this much 
of personal reminiscence. For reasons connected 
with them these personal statements are introduced. 

" No dramatist can draw taller men than him- 
self." Hugh Miller did not mean that a writer may 
not describe greater men than himself, but that he 
cannot invent a character greater than his own. It 
is as plain as the axiom in physics that water can- 
not rise above its level. That which is created can- 
not be greater than that which creates. 

It is very common for us to write of " taller 
men " than ourselves ; we all do this. When you 



20 The Man of Galilee. 

were but a college-boy you did not, as you will re- 
member, shrink from writing essays upon Cromwell, 
Washington, Gladstone, Bismarck, and the few such 
men who have lived. I have known a young man to 
write fairly well of even Socrates. But he had the 
cyclopedias. He was not creating— thinking out for 
himself and of himself— the good and wise old sage. 

Hugh Miller says, '' Dickens knows his place." 
The gifted noveli3t did not attempt great charac- 
ters. Shakespeare did ; he was greater than any 
character he produced; *^ taller'' than any man he 
'' drew.'* 

When you come to ask whether these four Jews, 
the evangelists, could have invented the character 
we know as Jesus you must remember that they 
had, first of all, in order to do it, to throw them- 
selves outside the sphere of Jewish thought and 
sentiment. If to them had been granted all per- 
sonal qualifications the conditions under which they 
lived made the invention of such a character impos- 
sible ; they could not breathe the intellectual, 
social, and moral air in which they lived and do it. 
For this character, the Jesus of the evangelists, is 
not in harmony with the essential characteristics of 
the Jewish race or with the dominant influences of 
that time ; this character antagonizes these charac- 
teristics and influences at every point. 



What No Dramatist Can Do, 21 

Granting — and it is admitting an intellectual 
miracle that staggers credulity — that these men did 
meet the first condition for the invention of such a 
character, and overcame, as no other men ever did 
in any nation or time, the controlling influences 
under which they lived, let us ask whether, in view 
of what they reveal in these writings of themselves, 
they were capable of such an intellectual and spirit- 
ual feat as inventing a drama that should give Jesus 
to the world. 

To have achieved such a result they must have 
been in breadth, depth, and elevation of intellect 
capable of thinking out the mighty doctrines that 
Jesus taught. And this, we may well belieye, was 
the least part of their task. 

To me it is incredible that these four men could 
have thought out the teachings of Jesus. For such 
thinking they lacked all things that history and 
philosophy show to be necessary for such thinking. 

Why could not Socrates and Plato, great, learned, 
wise, and good, to whom came more than glimpses 
of heavenly truths, think out what the Sermon on 
the Mount contains ? 

Socrates and Plato, if mere men could do such 
thinking, ought to have thought out the Sermon 
on the Mount ; for they had every gift that nat- 
ure could bestow and every opportunity cultured 



22 The Man of Galilee. 

Athens could offer. And they did their best to 
think out the truths that bind man and God to- 
gether. They failed ; and Plato sighed for the com- 
ing of a divine man who would make clear what to 
him was dark. 

If Jesus never lived then the four evangelists, or 
men like them, thought out his wonderful doctrines. 
It is unthinkable. 

But theirs was a far harder task than thinking out 
the truths attributed to Jesus in the gospels ; they 
had also to think out a man who lived up to them. 
It is easier to write a great speech than to set be- 
fore the reader a man he knows to be capable of 
making it ; but this is easier than to proclaim a lofty 
doctrine of morals and show a man as living up to 
it. Their problem, if they thought it all out, was 
immeasurably more than the invention of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount and of the other discourses that 
move so easily on the same high plane of thought 
and spiritual life ; it was to invent a life and reveal 
a life in absolute harmony with these matchless dis- 
courses. But Jesus lived the Sermon on the Mount 
and all else that he ever taught. Not once, in the 
least particular, in word or deed, does he fail; 
always he lives up to his teaching ; he incarnated 
his doctrine. No other human being, before or 
since Jesus, ever lived up to the Sermon on the 



What No Dramatist Can Do, 23 

Mount ; the best men and women have only ap- 
proximated it ; and it is the best who have most 
reahzed their failure. But Jesus Hved his teach- 
ings so perfectly that it is only in his life that we 
truly read their meaning. 

How shall we measure the capacity of these four, 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, for creating this 
character of Jesus? By the revelations they make 
in their writings of themselves : their capacity and 
character. 



24 The Man of Galilee. 




CHAPTER III. 

MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN NEITHER 
GOOD NOR GREAT ENOUGH. 

OW little the evangelists were capable of 
inventing such a character as the Jesus of 
the four gospels is made very plain by 
comparing Jesus and his doctrines with them and 
their notions. 

It must be assumed here that you have, to some 
extent at least, considered what the character of 
Jesus is and what his teachings mean. As to your 
conception of him and his teachings, this I am sure 
of: if you continue to study him and his words your 
best ideas now will, by and by, seem to you to be 
very unworthy. 

Measure the evangelists and their thoughts by 
Jesus and his thoughts. How small, narrow, mea- 
ger, and lean of soul they are ! When they speak, 
when they act in these histories, they give us the 
gauge and the level of very common men. They 
misapprehend him till he is rent with grief at their 
dullness and hardness of heart. They misinterpret 
his simplest words. They show in many ways what 



Neither Good nor Great Enough, 25 

even to us seems to be amazing spiritual stupidity 
and spiritual incapacity. 

This is a fair specimen of them and their think- 
ing powers : Jesus said to them one day, ^* Beware 
of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Saddu- 
cees.'' ** And they reasoned among themselves, 
saying, It is because we have taken no bread," sup- 
posing that he meant they must not eat bread with 
these people. 

This also gives us the drift and gauge of their 
thoughts: Jesus was constantly and in many ways 
speaking to them of the ^^ kingdom of heaven," and 
they kept dreaming and talking of a '^ kingdom of 
Israel," the restoration of David's throne. This w^as 
the common thought and talk of their circle. One 
of the best of the w^omen who follow^ed Jesus and 
loved him, braving danger and contempt for his sake, 
Salome, preferred ambitious requests for her two 
sons, James and John, who were in their mother's 
secret and sympathy, seeking high places for them 
in what they so longed for — the coming dispensa- 
tion of national deliverance and dominion. 

So far below his thoughts are their thoughts, so 
unlike him are they, that no Christian child, who 
has but partially learned of Jesus what he means by 
the *' kingdom of God," can read what Salome and 
her sons say to Jesus without recoiling from. them.. 



26 The Man of Galilee. 

Were the evangelists good enough — did they have 
the moral elevation necessary to the conception of 
such truths as Jesus taught ? Of such a life as Jesus 
lived ? Of J esus himself? 

If you know what is in these gospels it is too 
plain to you to need argument that these men were 
very far below the sphere of Jesus as to morals, 
rights and wrongs, and whatever relates to spiritual 
life. While he was proclaiming self-renunciation as 
the condition precedent to entering into life at all 
in common with his life, these men, while claiming 
to be his disciples and best friends, were wont to 
*Mispute ** with one another about seats of honor 
at dinings, as well as places of honor in the earthly 
kingdom they were looking for. 

Some of them showed that they could fight upon 
occasion — their Galilean blood was equal to that ; 
but they greatly lacked moral courage. They were 
afraid not only of men's anger, but of their criticism. 
But it is impossible to think of Jesus as hesitating, 
for one instant, from any sort of fear of men, fear 
of death or criticism, in uttering one truth or doing 
one right thing. We cannot think of Jesus as feel- 
ing the pulse of public sentiment in order to de- 
termine what he should say. We cannot think of 
Jesus as, for one instant, looking about him to read 
in the faces of his hearers, whether they were Gal- 



Neither Good nor Great Enough. 27 

ilean peasants or the chief estates of Jerusalem, the 
probable reception of his words. We cannot think 
of him as veering the thickness of a line from the 
perfect truth as he saw it in order to win favor or 
avoid resentment. It is certain to us that such 
thoughts w^ere never in his mind — that such feel- 
ings were never in his heart. His '' eye was single," 
his *^ whole body full of light." 

Do these men whose names go with the four 
gospels show right feeling, sentiment, for inventing 
such a character, granting, what we know they did 
not have, all other qualifications? Seeing what 
they w^ere, w^hat they show themselves to have 
been, is it possible to believe that, in their inmost 
souls, they were in sympathy with the character they 
have given us in the gospels ? To invent a truly 
great, all-round character, there must be not only 
adequate gifts of intellect and force of conscience ; 
there must be also right sensibility. There must not 
only be a large mind and a true conscience ; there 
must be a good heart. The evangelists were not 
bad men, but they were unspiritual. If one cannot, 
as an original conception of the intellect, '^ draw a 
taller man than himself," much less can he draw a 
better man than himself. 

Test their capacity for such a work as inventing 
the Jesus of the gospels in any direction. Compare 



28 The Man of Galilee, 

these men with Jesus as to his doctrine and prac- 
tice as to toleration and human brotherhood. They 
shrink into nothingness. 

Jesus goes to the house of the publican, Zaccheus, 
whom all Jericho hated. Jesus dines with the man 
who was unpopular, who was despised ; he preaches 
the full Gospel to him ; he is kind to him ; he loves 
him. The disciples were in sympathy not with 
Jesus, but the crowd that '' murmured." They were 
mortified, displeased, afraid, scandalized ; Jesus had 
done so imprudent a thing as to dine with a man 
who had no friends, but many foes. 

You know of Jesus from his words, above all 
from his life, that he was incapable of prejudice ; that 
no wretched or mean man of any class or race could 
appeal to him in vain. You know that Jesus was 
as free from all intolerance, from all caste feeling 
and race prejudice, as the virgin snow is free from 
stain. But his disciples, these men who have told 
us of him, were saturated and poisoned with these 
feelings ; they lived on the low plane of their race 
and time, and not above it. In the *^ Acts of the 
Apostles '' w^e see what that plane was ; the Jew 
hated Gentiles. Consider the history of Peter's 
visit to Cornelius, and you will see how deep and 
inveterate is the feeling that opened a gulf between 
the Jews and other races. Consider what is meant 



Neither Good nor Great Enough, 29 

by the sudden outburst of rage at the word '' Gen- 
tile " that day Paul spoke to the mob in the temple- 
court, as he stood on the castle stairs. All history 
illustrates this intense race prejudice. In this coun- 
try, in the spring of 1888, a Jew celebrated the 
funeral of his daughter because she had married a 
Gentile. 

Read the story of the Syrophenician woman, the 
parable of the good Samaritan, his heavenly doc- 
trines about loving our enemies, and then think of 
these writers inventing Jesus and his doctrines. 

See the false shame on their faces when they find 
Jesus talking with the woman of Sychar by Jacob's 
well, and ask whether men like these lived in the 
same world with him ! 

Consider the attitude of Jesus toward fallen 
women. See how he bore himself with the woman 
who washed his feet with her tears in Simon's house ; 
see his tender respect for Magdalene ; see him, 
his cheeks aflame with shame and confusion, his 
eyes dewy with pity, as he made marks on the 
ground with his finger that day they brought a sin- 
ful girl to him and demanded judgment upon her. 

These men who wrote of Jesus were as incapable 
of such sentiments and conduct as they were inca- 
pable of building worlds. God pity us ! as inca- 
pable as we, his disciples of to-day, are, who, after 



30 The Man of Galilee, 

all that he has taught us and done for us, in our 
meanness and cowardice abide still in heathenism, 
and scorn those whom Jesus did not scorn. We 
may judge these evangelists by ourselves ; they were' 
as we are. They were ashamed of him when he 
spoke respectfully and kindly to fallen women ; we 
would be ashamed of him now if he were again 
among us in the flesh, bearing himself toward our 
outcasts as he did when he w^as in Galilee. 

If possible, these evangelists were as incapable as 
we are of inventing the character of Jesus. 

In what has been said of the ability of these men 
to conceive such a character as Jesus remember 
we are not speaking of copyists, but creators ; not 
of those who merely put together a story from 
materials furnished by history, or from some life 
that has been lived, but of those who invent, think 
out a character. The copyists, the historians, the 
biographers, the novelists, easily enough write and 
talk of greater and better men than themselves. 
This sort of literary work, this sort of thinking, is 
done every day ; it is as common as the *^ making 
of books.'' If the materials are furnished us we 
may w^ell enough write of those who are beyond 
and above us. We will naturally and often neces- 
sarily do this in describing one who actually lived. 
Great and good men and women have often had 



Neither Good nor Great Enough, 31 

biographers immeasurably inferior to them. A 
clever literary man may draw a fair picture of Julius 
Csesar. Froude did it. A man of hard and narrow 
spirit may so write of heroes as to make us feel 
their superiority. Carlyle did this for not a few. 
A small man may tell us of his master. Even Bos- 
well could do this. 

But in considering whether these four writers 
could have invented the character of Jesus we are 
not speaking of the sort of work historians and 
biographers do, but of pure creative work ; the 
thinking out of a character never described by an- 
other and that never lived. For the theory we are 
now considering is that Jesus never lived ; that he 
is only the product of the dramatic genius of these 
four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 

Now, you will conclude when you have consid- 
ered it, that very little, if any, of this sort of work 
is ever done. Perhaps we should hesitate to affirm 
that such creative work is impossible, but it may 
well be doubted whether any character in any fiction 
or drama of any sort, by any writer in any age, is a 
pure invention. Is there not for every character in 
fiction as well as in history a man somewhere, in 
some form ? some facts in actual life that furnish 
the materials for the conception and delineation of 
that form of life that the writing presents to us? 



32 The Man of Galilee. 

Is there in any writing any character that has not 
intellectual descent from some life actually lived, or 
in some way other than by creative processes brought 
into the writer*s thoughts ? 

Consider Shakespeare's plays. Life furnished the 
materials ; his heroes and heroines have real men 
and women back of them. Take Milton's Satan. 
He is very like Milton in force and sublimity; but 
the poet did not create the character. His Satan 
is a composite work from Bible hints and heathen 
mythology. This Satan had lived in the thoughts 
of men before that Milton took him in hand. 

Only think how difficult, if not impossible, it must 
be to think out a perfectly new type of character, 
a type that has nothing in life to stand for it. It 
would be like trying to conceive of a sixth sense. 
Back of legends the noblest and the ignoblest there 
is some form of life or some form of fact. It may 
be that all ideas even not revealed have their type 
or origin somewhere in nature or in life. Whether 
with hand or brain man works upon materials fur- 
nished him ; man creates nothing ; man is created. 

But there was in no nation whatever — and these 
four men knew the Jewish nation only with any 
fullness of knowledge — any character, any life, any 
facts, that could have so much as suggested Jesus. 
They were shut up to Hebrew history, and that 



Neither Good nor Great Enough, 33 

could furnish no materials to the evangelists for the 
construction of such a character. It was not sug- 
gested by the Hebrew prophets ; for it is evident 
that the disciples did not understand these proph- 
ecies as pointing to Jesus till after he had lived his 
life, till his* mission was ended. Nay, with all the 
backward-shining light of his life no four men in 
the world to-day could, without the actual story, 
construct the character and life of Jesus out of what 
the prophets say. 

There has been a good deal of fanciful writing 
concerning certain characters in the Old Testament 
history, considered as types of the Messiah. Jo- 
seph, Moses, Joshua, David — even magnificent and 
profligate Solomon and the coarse, dull Samson 
have been set forth as types of the true Son of man. 
Adam himself has been discussed and portrayed in 
this connection. Some of these men were among 
the greatest and best of the human race. But 
whatever they were as types of the Teacher, Prince, 
and Saviour foretold by the prophets, there was 
nothing in these men that could have suggested the 
invention of the Christ of the evangelists. 

So far as the predictions in Hebrew prophecy may 
be urged as accounting for the conception of Jesus 
by the evangelists, they not only did not under- 
stand them so as to make such use of them, they 
8 



34 The Man of Galilee, 

misunderstood them, and, in common with their 
people, supposed that they foretold another and 
altogether different character than that of the Jesus 
of the gospels. Jesus had to live and die before 
they could understand the prophets as referring to 
him ; it was he who unlocked their meaning. The 
whole Christ is not in the prophets — could not be ; 
words could not manifest him ; he had to hye to be 
known. 

Non-Christian Hebrews are to this day looking 
for a different character to appear and fulfill the 
prophets. The ^' Jews* Wailing Place " in Jerusa- 
lem tells travelers of our time how they cling to an 
interpretation of the prophets that excludes the 
lowly Nazarene, of whom the evangelists have 
told us. 



Not a Jew of That Age, 35 




CHAPTER IV. 

IS JESUS AN IDEAL JEW OF THE TIME OF TIBERIUS ? 

E will consider the notion that Jesus is the 
product of dramatic genius from other 
stand-points. Have the evangelists given 
form and voice to national ideals ? 

Jesus cannot be in those writings the crystalliza- 
tion of national legends ; there are no such legends. 
Had these writers constructed the character out of 
national legends or national hopes Jesus would have 
been a national deliverer, not a personal Saviour, 
talking to men of sin and salvation. He was not 
at all, as these writings and as other Hebrew writ- 
ings make plain, the nation's ideal of a hero and de- 
liverer. Jesus was any thing but such an ideal ; he 
utterly spoiled the national ideal of the Shiloh who 
was to come ; he disappointed every expectation 
that rose to greet him. 

Once, when the people and the priests thought 
they might use him as a national leader, they tried 
to force a king's crown upon his head. He refused 
their crown, and they crucified him. 

There is another fatal objection to the notion that 



36 The Man of Galilee. 

Jesus IS only the invention of four romance writers, 
suddenly springing up among a people who did not 
write romances. If they invented him w^e should 
have four Christs, not one. 

There are differences enough in their statements 
that we cannot explain in any honest way, but that 
would, I suppose, cease to be differences if only 
we knew all the facts to show that these writers 
were not in collusion to tell a story that would hold 
together. We do not know all the facts ; St. John, 
you will remember, tells us that many things are 
not recorded ; perhaps we have only the smaller 
part of them. 

These four men are not alike ; no two men are. 
They differ in style and, therefore, in temperament, 
gifts, training, and character. They are as different 
as any four writers you know ; for illustration, as 
Carlyle, Emerson, Macaulay, and Irving differ. 

To make plainer the thought I wish you to con- 
sider, take Satan as a character in literature. Com- 
pare the Satans of Milton, Goethe, Bailey, Brown- 
ing, and Byron. These writers show us five, not 
one chief of devils. They are as unlike as their 
authors ; and they are like their authors. 

Only a woman could have drawn the Satan of 
Mrs. Browning. Milton's Satan is a copy of the 
Miltonic intellect and character — grand, scholarly, 



Not a Jew of That Age, 37 

metaphysical, austere ; Puritan is the hero of the 
Paradise Lost, Bailey's Satan grew in the at- 
mosphere of Temple Court, and is a London lawyer 
of the first order with a diabolical nature. Byron's 
is like Byron — brilliant, moody, desperate, and vain. 
Goethe's is German, and brought up in Weimar. 
He is like the high-priest and poet of materialism 
who gave us Faust ; like Goethe, university bred, 
learned, scientific, literary, all-accomplished, gay and 
cynical by turns, a man of the world, gentlemanly 
even in diabolisms, one familiar with the best so- 
ciety, cosmopolitan in his tastes, and nineteenth 
century in dress and manners as well as in his opin- 
ions and habits. 

But these four men who wrote of Jesus, these 
men so different in their training and manner of life 
— Matthew, who had been a tax-collector under the 
Roman Government ; Mark, a mere child when Jesus 
was among men, and brought up under a careful 
mother ; Luke, a "- physician beloved ; " and John, 
a fisherman of Galilee — these have given us one 
Jesus, not four. The differences are such as four 
photographs of one man show in different postures 
taken by the same artist in the same day. No mat- 
ter by whose pen recorded, the words and deeds of 
Jesus in the four gospels are the words and deeds of 
one man. 



38 The Man of Galilee, 

But there is another view of the notion that the 
evangelists invented the character of Jesus. 

Granting that these men had the mental and 
spiritual capacity to have created such a character 
as that of Jesus ; granting that, by some strange 
chance, although without precedent or succession, 
and in utter contradiction of all we know of the laws 
of the human mind, these writers, in themselves and 
their circumstances so different, invented not four, 
but one character, there is another thing to be 
considered, and it alone is conclusive : they were 
bound to have invented a different Jesus from the 
Jesus of the gospels. 

It is impossible but that these men were under 
the influences that not only characterized their times 
but made them what they were. The gospels 
themselves show that these men were not only 
thoroughly Hebrew in their thoughts and disposi- 
tions, but Hebrews of that period. No writer can 
any more escape the intellectual and moral atmos- 
phere of his time than he can escape the heredity 
that is in his blood. These influences will show 
themselves in any work of the imagination as cer- 
tainly as children will resemble their ancestors. 

Now Jesus, though a Jew, is not like his time or 
people. He is a Jew only in blood ; he is not a 
Jew in thought or character. 



Not a Jew of That Age, 39 

The Jew of that period, saying nothing of what 
was past or of what was to come to that most won- 
derful people, was narrow in his sympathies ; Jesus 
was as broad as humanity. The Jew was exclusive ; 
Jesus made welcome all who came to him. The 
Jew had small toleration for opinions that were not 
his own, and none for men of other races ; no cos- 
mopolitanism, or even Christian charity, has ever 
yet reached the divine tolerance of Jesus. The 
Jew felt only contempt for the mongrel tribes of 
Samaria ; Jesus makes a Samaritan teach us univer- 
sal brotherhood. The Jew felt that contact with 
other nations defiled him ; there is not in Jesus the 
faintest flavor of any sort of race or caste prejudice. 

The master passion that dominated Jewish life 
in the days of Jesus was a fierce patriotism that ex- 
pended its fires in bitter and undying hatred of 
Rome ; Jesus, while loving his people and weeping 
over their impending calamities, said, '' Love your 
enemies." If these writers were inventing a char- 
acter when they wrote the gospels their hero would 
have been in sympathy with his time and people. 
Such a Christ would have unfurled the lion-ensign 
of Judah, and every sword would have leaped from 
its scabbard from the mountains of Lebanon to the 
borders of Edom. But Jesus paid tribute to Caesar 
and commanded his disciples to do it. 



40 The Man of Galilee. 

Of Jesus we may well say what he said of him- 
self: he is ^^ The Son of man.'* He belongs to all ; 
he is a universal character, and the only one in his- 
tory. He is brother to every human being ; he 
loves one as well as another and each one perfectly. 
He means as much to us of to-day as to those friends 
in Bethany whom he loved, or as he meant to that 
" beloved disciple '' who leaned upon his breast at 
the Last Supper. 

The necessary conclusion is, such a character 
could not have been created by dramatic genius, 
least of all by the four writers of that period who 
have given us the gospels. The Jesus of the gos- 
pels must have lived, to have been conceived or 
described. 

This conclusion agrees with the method these 
writers adopt in presenting this character to us. It 
is the method of perfect simplicity. They nowhere 
try to tell us what he was or what he was like. 
There are no comparisons, no analyses of qualities, 
no character-sketching ; there is no effort, not the 
least, to draw a portrait of him. They simply write 
down what they saw him do and what they heard 
him say; and they make it plain that they under- 
stood neither his deeds nor his words, and that least 
of all they understood him. 

The loftiest genius could not have invented the 



Not a Jew of That Age, 41 

character of Jesus. Plain men, like Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John, could write of a life that was lived; 
they could write down the words they heard him 
speak; they could record the story of the good 
works they saw him do, and so make us to know 
Jesus, *^ who and what manner of man he was." 



42 The Man of Galilee. 




CHAPTER V. 

JESUS AND MYTHS. 

jjOME learned men, in seeking a way to ac- 
count for the Jesus of the New Testament 
without accepting the reahty of his exist- 
ence, have sought to set up a notion Hke this : It is 
true that the evangehsts did not invent this charac- 
ter, yet Jesus never really lived ; he is only the myth 
of Hebrew history. 

We are to think of Jesus, they tell us, as we 
do of the Greek Theseus, of the Egyptian Isis and 
Osiris, of the Thor and Odin of the Scandinavian 
legends, of the Hindustanee Vishnu, or of Buddha, 
and of scores of other myths that belong to the 
poetry, traditions, superstitions, and religions of 
other nations. Much scholarship has been mustered 
into the service of this notion. All this may appear 
more absurd than serious to one whose education 
has made Jesus of Nazareth real to his thoughts. 
It may indeed be so ; but we must be fair even to 

those who seem to us to advance absurd views. I 

• 

cannot doubt that some able and sincere minds have 



Jesus and Myths, 43 

accepted a theory of Jesus that makes him out only 
a Hebrew myth. 

Let us look at this theory in a common-sense way, 
without burdening these pages with tiresome and 
confusing quotations. There are some things which 
may be plain enough to those who are unlearned in 
the writings and legends referred to — some things 
that the learned cannot deny. Myths are growths, 
and whatever grows — whether a tree, a man, a 
thought, or a legend — grows under certain laws 
that cannot be violated. There may be some laws 
under which myths develop unknown to me. But 
some of these laws are unmistakable. I mention 
them, and you will see for yourself that none of them 
are observed in the story of Jesus. The story we 
find in the evangelists violates them all. If the 
conceptions among other nations that are called 
myths are myths then Jesus cannot be counted 
among them. 

I. Myths originate and, as conceptions, are com- 
plete before written history. In all nations the 
earliest historians relate mythological stories that 
antedate all letters and all records. In some na- 
tions a fragmentary history went to a sort of record 
before there was a true written language. Rude pict- 
ures engraved on stone or painted, and what are 
called cuneiform characters, such as are found on 



44 The Man of Galilee, 

the bricks or clay cylinders among the ruins of Nine- 
veh and Babylon, and such hieroglyphics as are found 
on ancient tombs in Egypt, in Mexico, and other 
countries — these tell us of national myths that be- 
longed to a period ages before even these crude at- 
tempts at writing were made. The principle — it is 
invariable as a law — holds good in every nation that 
has a myth or written history of any sort. 

But the Jesus of the evangelists appeared, and 
the story of his life w^as written, long after the most 
eventful and important history of the Hebrew race 
was recorded. 

2. About all myths there is something grotesque 
if not monstrous. They are exaggerations of men 
or animals. Sometimes they are natural forces rep- 
resented as becoming incarnate in some fantastic 
shape. If in human form the mythical characters 
are gigantic, strange, verging upon the unnatural 
and impossible. But Jesus appears as a man, simply ; 
he has not a personal peculiarity to set him apart 
from his neighbors and companions. Not a word 
in the story suggests any thing abnormal or even 
singular. There is not a word to tell us of his per- 
sonal appearance ; there is no suggestion of any 
thing un-human or extra-human in his form or 
manner as he appeared among men. The halo 
about his head you see in pictures is the pretty con- 



Jesus and Myths, 45 

ceit of the painters ; there is not a hint of this, or 
any thing Hke it, in the story of the evangehsts. 
There is not so much as a word concerning his com- 
plexion, his stature, the color of his hair or eyes, or 
the tones of his voice. He is just a man among 
men — one who might have walked unnoticed in the 
streets of Jerusalem. 

Read what the old books tell you of Grecian, 
Roman, Egyptian, and other myths. How strange 
they are, how different from men ! Jesus appears as 
a man, and the evangelists have not one word to 
indicate that he was peculiar in appearance in any 
respect. 

3. Myths reflect their time, place, and race. This 
statement is without exception. Theseus is of 
ancient Greece and is Greek in every sinew and 
lineament. Odin and Thor come to us out of the 
dark German forests, and are but exaggerations, in 
their virtues and vices, of the mighty barbarians 
who dwelt in them. Isis and Osiris are as like 
Egypt as the desert, the Nile, and its mysterious 
sources. Bel-Merodach is as like Chaldea as the 
valley of the Euphrates and its lost civilization 
could make him. Vishnu is as Hindustanee as the 
Ganges and its terrible jungles and the fierce beasts 
that made men afraid. And so of them every one, 
from the loftiest and noblest conceptions of god- 



46 The Man of Galilee, 

like men that ever inspired the Greek imagination 
with great ideals down to the meanest and most 
devilish that ever filled the superstitions of African 
or Australian bushmen with terrors. But in Jesus 
there is not a trace of coloring from any scene or 
period in Hebrew history, from Abraham in Ur 
of the Chaldees to the days of Caesar Augustus. 

4. In all nations myths defy chronology ; they 
are without dates. In the imagination of their 
people they seem to have existed not only from 
the beginnings of national life, but to have gone 
before it. Think of any of them — those that have 
come down to us from ancient nations, as well as 
those that still hold their place in the folk-lore of 
barbarous peoples. They are all without dates. 
We do not read of Isis and Osiris appearing in the 
capital of Egypt in the days of Rameses II. ; the 
Egyptian gods are older than any of their dynas- 
ties and lived before men kept genealogies. And 
so of all the gods of mythology; they are with- 
out contemporaries known to any history. Myths 
precede the invention of calendars ; if time was 
counted at all the years were without dates. How 
utterly different is the story of Jesus, that some 
men tell us is only a Hebrew myth I 

Of Jesus and the time of his appearing it is 
written : 



Jesus and Myths. 47 

'' And it came to pass in those days, that there 
went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all 
the world should be taxed. And this taxing was 
first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria/' 
Augustus was emperor ; Cyrenius was governor in 
Syria; Herod was king in Judea. 

5. Myths defy topography as they do chronology ; 
they are not only without dates, they are without 
definite localities. They appeared not only some 
when that cannot be fixed in time, but some- 
where that cannot be found as a place. Their ori- 
gin is shrouded in mystery. Some of the contem- 
poraries of Jesus made it a point against him, *' As 
to this man we know whence he is.'* 

In the story of Jesus we are told of places with 
such exactness that the statements of the evangelists 
are to this day^ the best guides to the scholarly 
men who make explorations in order to find relics 
and fragments of lost history in Palestine. They 
do not tell us of Jesus as appearing somewhere in 
their country, as Galilee, Samaria, Judea. They 
tell us of Nazareth, Bethlehem, Bethsaida, Caper- 
naum, Bethphage, Bethany, the Mount of Olives. 
They tell us of the " beautiful gate of the temple'' 
which, he and his disciples looked upon, and of 
** Jacob's well " " near to the parcel of ground that 
Jacob gave to his son Joseph " — the very spot where 



48 The Man of Galilee, 

Jesus sat to rest, while his disciples went to Sychar 
to buy bread of the baker — the well from which a 
woman of the Samaritans drew water and gave him 
to drink. 

6. Myths are not completed at once. They re- 
quire long time — ages — for their development. But 
the conception of the character of Jesus comes into 
the thought of men with his manifestation and 
abides through the centuries that have followed as 
it was first given to the world. 

There is absolutely nothing like it in all Hebrew 
history that went before him, as there is nothing 
like it in the history that comes after him. And the 
conception of Jesus that is given by the brief ac- 
counts of the evangelists is so finished, so complete, 
that the attempts of after times to add to it in the 
stories of the so-called apocryphal gospels have 
utterly failed of their design. No marvelous 
stories, handed down from one generation to 
another, have in the least added to or taken from 
the Jesus of the evangelists. What Jesus signified 
when the gospels were written he has been through 
the centuries that have followed him. What he 
was then he is to-day. 

7. All myths belong to the infancy, never to the 
age of any nation. They spring out of the morn- 
ing mists ; they never appear in the light of day. If 



Jesus and Myths, 49 

the story of Jesus had been placed in Chaldea, 
before the call of Abraham, it also would have be- 
longed to the infancy of a race. To harmonize with 
the laws that govern the development of myths the 
story of Jesus should have anticipated the first 
chapters in Hebrew history ; it should have been 
placed in that uncertain period that includes the 
dispersion from Armenia, the second cradle of the 
human race. 

But the story of Jesus is given to the world, fresh 
and complete, with not one hint of it in all preced- 
ing history, in the last years, the closing days of 
Hebrew national life in Judea. 

The story antedates but a little while the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem by Vespasian and his Roman 
legions ; when Jesus was born Augustus was em- 
peror ; when Jesus entered upon his ministry 
Tiberius Caesar was in the fifteenth year of his 
reign ; his lieutenant, Pontius Pilate, governed Ju- 
dea as a subject province, and his soldiers kept the 
peace in the holy city. 

Consider how impossible it is for myths to origi- 
nate after written history, in the sun-glare of hfe in 
a full-grown nation. Even the pretty stories of 
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table 
belong to that far-away period in England when 
there was no written history worth the name, when 



50 The Man of Galilee. 

letters were almost unknown, when all was young 
and fresh and ignorant, and the fairies still ruled 
in the forests. 

Think of a myth starting up to-day in London 
under the shadow of St. Paul's and Parliament 
House. Think of the world in our time talking of 
'' Chinese Gordon'' if there had lived no *' Chinese 
Gordon." If the people who have letters, and write 
histories, and '' turn the world upside-down " with 
the gospel story, should leave the poor savages of 
the Congo Valley to themselves, thousands of years 
from our times Livingstone and Stanley will live 
in African traditions as godlike men ; and so new 
myths will be born, will grow and fix themselves in 
the legends of these lands where they have done 
many wonderful works — but London and New 
York will breed no myths concerning Livingstone 
and Stanley. 



Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature, 51 




CHAPTER VI. 

JESUS AND HEBREW HUMAN NATURE. 

HERE are writers who see clearly that the 
four evangelists could not have invented 
the character of Jesus, and who know 
that the story of his manifestation violates every 
known law that governs the birth and growth of 
myths ; but they tell us Jesus was nevertheless only 
a man. They say he did really live in Palestine in 
the days of Augustus, Tiberius, Herod, and Pilate, 
and that he was only a man after all — a man of 
very great gifts and virtues, the best man and the 
greatest teacher that ever lived. This means that 
human nature was capable of producing Jesus ; it 
means that Hebrew human nature in that country 
and in that age was capable of producing Jesus, 
his doctrines and his life. In other words, he was 
a most extraordinary but still a natural product of 
his race, country, and time ; the normal product, 
though the consummate flower, of Jewish life. 

In considering that the evangelists, granting them 
ability of all sorts for the invention of so perfect 
a character and such a character, must have given 



62 The Man of Galilee, 

us a different character, some of the difficulties of 
the natural development theory were incidentally 
brought into view. But there are other matters to 
be fairly considered in connection with this method 
of accounting for Jesus. 

Jesus, in one of the simplest — yet it is one of the 
profoundest and most comprehensive of philosoph- 
ical principles — gave us the germ of our inductive 
philosophy and our modern scientific method. 
When he said, ** By their fruits ye shall know 
them,'' he taught us that we are to make our 
theories conform to ascertained facts rather than 
explain our facts by our preconceived theories. It 
IS by the fruit we are to know what the quality of 
the tree is. 

What manner of fruit grew on this long-lived 
Hebrew tree ? You can seek the answer for your- 
self ; all Hebrew history will tell you. 

Begin with the story of Abraham, in Genesis, and 
follow through the centuries the thread of Hebrew 
history to the times of Caesar Augustus and of 
Jesus, if you will, till our own time. We find in 
that history patriarchs, law-givers, priests, judges, 
soldiers, kings, statesmen, poets, reformers, and 
prophets. We have Abraham and the other patri- 
archs ; Moses, Aaron, and his successors ; Joshua 
and his compatriots ; Samuel, last and best of a 



Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature. 53 

long line of judges ; Saul, David — poet, as well as 
soldier and king ; Solomon, ger.ius and philosopher, 
sage and profligate ; Isaiah and the other prophets ; 
Nehemiah and other reformers ; Daniel, the states- 
man, in the service of an alien prince, the conqueror 
of his people. In later times we have Judas Mac- 
cabaeus, the heroic defender of his country, and the 
other mighty men who gave their lives in a hope- 
less struggle for the freedom of their nation. Still 
later we read of men like Annas and Caiaphas, the 
wicked high-priests of an evil time. We have 
Gamaliel, learned in the law, and his pupil, Saul of 
Tarsus. (But for Jesus there would have been no 
Paul.) We have the men brought to view as *' dis- 
ciples" of Jesus. Later on appear such a man as 
Josephus and the brave men who fought the 
Romans and died for Jerusalem. Consider them 
all, the strong and the weak, the good and the bad, 
as they grew upon this Hebrew tree. These men 
show the best as well as the worst it could do. We 
must judge this tree by its fruits. 

Can we place Jesus among them and count him 
as one of them — the best of them? Could a tree 
which produces these others produce him ? To ask 
the question is to answer it. 

I know what some writers have to say when they 
speak of finding types of Jesus among those who 



54 The Man of Galilee, 

lived before him ; what they say of Moses, Joshua, 
and others. Some of them were truly great and 
good men — among the best the human race can 
show for itself. But we cannot place Jesus among 
them ; they do not approach him, and they are not 
like him. He stands alone and apart. He is not 
only above them^ he is unlike them. The question 
is not simply whether the Hebrew tree, judging it 
by all its other fruits, was capable of producing 
this one perfect character in all the world, but also 
whether it could have produced this kind of char- 
acter ? Certainly it never did before him or after 
him. Search history for one shadow of proof that 
this race — wonderful and unique in all times and 
countries — from Abraham to Disraeli had in it any 
powers that could, as a normal development, pro- 
duce Jesus of Nazareth. 

If you will you may give your inquiries wider 
range. Forget that Jesus was a Jew by blood and 
birth and training. Try all history; search the 
records of other nations. Tell me of the sages and 
reformers — the great and good men of other peo- 
ples and countries; of Zoroaster, Confucius, Soc- 
rates, Buddha, and the rest ; of Moses or any other 
Jew you could name along with them. Is Jesus 
only one of them ? The best of them perhaps — 
but only one of them? Read all you may of them 



Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature. 55 

as their best friends tell their stories, and you would 
recoil if some maker of cyclopedias should talk of 
only adding the name of Jesus. 

It is not simply that you have heard your mother 
pray to Jesus; it is not simply the prompting of 
your ^'cradle faith/* The reason lies deeper; if 
to-day for the first time you were to read of the 
great and holy men of other nations and of Jesus 
you must think of him, without waiting to reason 
why, in a place by himself, as a great star shines 
alone. No light is so splendid but the eye knows 
the sunlight for what it is. 

But it is not, as you know, a question as to what 
the human race in some age could do ; it is, what 
could the Hebrew race do in the age of Caesar 
Augustus? For Jesus was of the Hebrew race and 
of that age. 

But for the moment forget this limitation of our 
inquiry and ask. What could that age do? It is like 
asking, What could the Roman race and civilization 
do ? For the glory of Egypt and Babylon had long 
departed, and the great Greeks were before the time 
of Jesus. Roman life then dominated the world, 
and Roman life did its utmost in producing Julius 
Caesar. But there was not in Roman life, tradition, 
thought, sentiment, one quality or influence of any 
sort whatsoever that could have any relation to the 



56 The Man of Galilee, 

production of a character like this that the evan- 
gelists have given us. 

But at last we must ask simply this question : 
What could the Hebrew race in that age do? 

Only Jewish influences entered into the life of 
Jesus. There is not in any single thought or word 
of his so much as an echo of any thing character- 
istic of other peoples. There is not an undertone 
in his thoughts from the Greek or Roman masters. 
He had nothing from other teachers or thinkers. 
He was only a Jew, never out of Palestine, of a 
peasant family in Galilee. The Galilean was a 
narrow, suspicious, and revengeful man ; provincial 
to the last degree ; holding fast old ideas and reject- 
ing new ones with little regard to argument or 
evidence — the *^ Bourbon*' of his time. He was a 
man of bitterer prejudices than characterized even 
the men of Judea. But even Galilee had its best 
and its worse, and Jesus was brought up in a dis- 
reputable mountain town. **Can there any good 
thing come out of Nazareth?^ '* was a common prov- 
erb, carrying its own answer and indicating the 
estimate placed upon the little town by the better 
people of the country. 

Jesus was untaught in the greater schools of 
his own people. *' How knoweth this man letters, 
having never learned ? *' implies more than that 



Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature, 57 

his hearers knew his history well enough to know 
he was not school-trained as their scribes were ; it 
means that they knew he did not speak as their 
scholars spoke. Jesus did not talk like a book ; he 
was not learned in books ; his language indicates, 
so far as books count, knowledge of the Scriptures 
only; he could read, but he was no scholar. 

Compare now the conditions under which this 
young carpenter of Nazareth, working at his trade, 
and doing good work till he was thirty years old, 
grew * into manhood ; consider what his people 
were at their best ; consider how little of what was 
best in Hebrew life entered into his Galilean bring- 
ing up ; consider the hard conditions and the 
narrow limitations of his life, and tell me whether 
Jesus is a normal development of his race and time 
and place ? 

We will not now speak of his teachings ; com- 
pare him with his natural conditions. There is 
nothing in all human history that makes it possible 
to believe that a mere Jew, brought up in that 
Nazareth, could have become this flawless, perfect 
character. If it be otherwise there is nothing, 
absolutely nothing, in heredity or environment ; 
then any soil can produce any fruits. Better ex- 
pect to find the kingly trees of the Yosemite Valley 
growing with the stunted sage of Arizona. 



58 The Man of Galilee, 

Consider the teachings of Jesus and tell me can 
this perfection of truth come out of Nazareth? 
Consider what he teaches about God, the human 
soul, sin, reconciliation, salvation and immortality. 
Consider how he teaches and illustrates in his life 
the brotherhood of the human race. Consider his 
ethics — his doctrines of rights and wrongs. What 
he teaches about rights and wrongs, in principle 
and practice, is so absolutely full and perfect that 
good men — the best men in the world to-day, so 
long after his time — cannot so much as conceive of 
one single virtue he did not teach or of one single 
evil that he did not condemn. Nay, the wisest and 
best are always trying to teach men the truth Jesus 
taught ; and his standard is so high that no sane and 
honest man has ever professed to have reached it. 

One writer has ventured, in order to find one 
spot on this sun, to say, Jesus did not teach 
patriotism ! His whole life was devoted to his 
people ; his doctrines nourish and conserve patriot- 
ism. He did not teach the thing a mere partisan 
of a clan or tribe calls patriotism ; then he would 
have been only a Galilean zealot. He teaches the 
only patriotism a good man can respect — a love of 
country that believes in righteousness and the 
golden rule that loves its own and another's too. 
If Jesus be only a man — a Galilean Jew, we must 



Jesus and Hebrew Human Nature. 59 

remember — he contradicts in his flawless all-round 
character and perfect teaching the conditions of his 
life. This perfection of character and teaching on 
the one hand, and this Galilean Jew and Nazarene 
carpenter on the other, not only do not agree, they 
cannot exist together. It is by his life that we 
realize how imperfect all others are ; it is by his 
teachings that we test the rights and wrongs of all 
other teachings. 

There is absolutely nothing in his race or age 
that accounts for Jesus. That he was a normal 
product of his race and age contradicts every law of 
life we know. If it be not so all history goes for 
nothing and there is no law or reason in the nature 
of things. 



60 The Man of Galilee, 




CHAPTER VII. 

HIS METHOD OF THOUGHT DIFFERENCES HIM 
FROM MEN. 

|N studying the story of the evangelists let 
us try to come nearer to Jesus. We 
need not fear; he would have us find out 
all about him that we can ; he would have us know 
what manner of man he is. If we love beauty, 
goodness, and truth, we will approach him with rev- 
erence. No good man, no man you can respect 
or trust, will speak of Jesus with flippant words. 
But we may go to him without hesitation ; he who 
took little children in his arms and blessed and 
kissed them will not receive the humblest student 
with coldness. Indeed, the more one needs him 
the more welcome he is. It was he who said to 
the "weary and heavy laden," ** Come unto me.'' 

Let us consider now, as best we may, what we 
must call his method of thought. It differences 
him utterly from all mere human teachers. We 
can find many illustrations. 

In the first place, Jesus does not seek the same 
end that the great thinkers, who have given the 



His Method of Thought, 61 

world its philosophy and its science, always seek — 
the creation of an intellectual system of and for the 
universe. Humboldt, who was a very learned and 
gifted man, gives us a great work he calls Cosmos. 
It tells all he knew, or thought he knew, of the uni- 
verse, and explains it all as best he could. He is 
one among many ; all the philosophers try to ac- 
count for things, and the greater they are the more 
they try. 

In the human mind there is a resistless tendency 
to search into secret things, and to construct a 
philosophy of them. Aristotle gave us his Cate- 
gories ; the moderns try their hand in the same 
line of things. It means only this : men who are 
philosophers and thinkers seek to classify all facts 
and to find out and express — ** formulate '' is the 
word — a complete, all-embracing, all-explaining law 
of them. 

Witty Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his Poet at 
the Breakfast'Table, gives us a pretty satire on this 
invincible disposition and always disappointed and 
disappointing effort of thinkers. His " Philosopher '' 
was ever just about to find expression for his great 
discovery — ^just about to state the all-comprehen- 
sive law, the perfect formula, that left out nothing 
and explained all. 

It is essentially a man's way; in all departments 



62 The Man of Galilee, 

we see the tendency and effort of men to explain 
the universe. 

The chemist talks of '* atoms " because he wishes 
to get down to the basis of things — to know the 
ultimate fact, beyond which analysis cannot go. 
The ontologist talks of '' germs *' for a like reason ; 
he is ever striving to find a something — a substance 
or a force — that will explain to him not one but 
every life process. And the greater ones are seek- 
ing always to explain the origin of all things — to 
show how the universe was started or got itself 
going. 

The philosopher who studies mind seeks the same 
sort of end — the construction of a mental science 
that embraces every fact and explains every mys- 
tery of mental action. The theologian is in the 
same drift ; he wants a philosophy of religion. He 
seeks to explain God, and, in not a few instances, 
seems to labor more earnestly to show how God 
can save a sinner consistently with his own nature 
and government than to show the sinner how to be 
saved. The theologian labors to show what the 
origin of evil is, and to make his view a philosophy 
that will harmonize all differences and explain all 
mysteries. 

The strength of this tendency in mere men — and 
it is strongest in the greatest — to find a statement 



His Method of Thought, 63 

that may account for all things is shown in the ab- 
surd conclusions that some of them, entirely sane 
on other subjects, accept for themselves and urge 
upon other minds. A great chemist concludes that 
the universe was '' once latent in a fiery cloud/* 
and seems content with a form of pretty words. 
Another expounder of mysteries accounts for life in 
our world by telling us that '^ germs " were first 
brought from somewhere in space by '' falling me- 
teorites/' pays his worship to what he dreams is 
science, and is content to push his problem further 
from him. The notion that the word '* proto- 
plasm '' is supposed to stand for represents another 
effort to explain all things, albeit by a theory 
harder to understand than the universe it would 
embrace and expound. These are only specimens ; 
both ancient and modern times abound in them. 
Wiser, perhaps, and quite as scientific was the des- 
peration of that student of the mysteries of life and 
man who concluded that the *^ missing link '' must 
be in the bottom of the Indian Ocean ; for no diver 
can prove what is not in water so deep as this 
fathomless sea. 

What we are now considering is a resistless tend- 
ency in thinking minds. It is not peculiar to one 
class of men ; it does not characterize one age. It 
is simply human nature to ask questions and seek 



64 The Man of Galilee, 

explanations. Consider a few names now men- 
tioned and see for yourself that the greater the 
mere man the more he tries to explain the uni- 
verse — to find a formula large enough to contain it, 
to classify its facts and correlate its forces. Think 
of these men and the few whose names should go 
with them — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Au« 
gustine, Pelagius, Athanasius, Calvin, Edwards, 
Leibnitz, Bacon, Humboldt, Kant, Cuvier, and, per- 
haps, some new men. Philosophers, scientists, theo- 
logians, they are all alike in this — they are building 
a system, a philosophy of the universe. 

Do not mistake my purpose in these illustrations ; 
the disposition which we have been considering is 
a pure human instinct ; it is resistless, and it is the 
condition of mental activity. The mind that does 
not ask questions, that does not knock at the closed 
doors of knowledge, is stagnant and will perish. 
Progress and growth depend upon inquiry. Wise 
men will cheer every earnest student, whether he 
is trying to find what an atom is or what the stars 
contain. It is a man's way to seek to explain 
all things ; the effort affords the drill and discipline 
that make growth and progress possible to the race. 

But in these respects, as in so many others, Jesus 
is utterly unlike the philosophers and scientists and 
theologians. He does not in the least seek the end 



His Method of Thought, 65 

that mere men seek. He makes us understand the 
universe — matter and mind, man and God — better 
than all of them put together. But he nowhere 
accounts for things. He has not a word about the 
" cosmos." He makes no inquiry, raises no ques- 
tion, offers no explanation concerning the origin of 
thingrs. In him there seems to be no consciousness 
of the mysteries of the universe, either as to its 
origin or nature. 

But it may be said Jesus taught morals, religion, 
not science or philosophy, and he had no occasion 
to construct a system of the universe. In morals 
and religion, more than anywhere else, do mere 
men build systems when they think, explain things 
when they teach. But Jesus, teaching morals and 
religion, w^as unlike all others, mere men, teaching 
morals and religion. He said not one word — he, the 
only teacher who seemed to understand it — about 
the '* origin of evil," the subject that has vexed not 
a little theology into lunacy : he, the only one who 
has seemed capable of doing it, has given us no 
" theodicy," nor so much as seemed to think of it 
at all. 

He did not, he who made claim to perfect knowl- 
edge of God, explain God or philosophize about 
God ; Jesus did not so much as give us a philosophy 
of himself, his life, or his mission. It was John, the 



66 The Man of Galilee. 

disciple, not Jesus, the Master, who wrote of the 
Logos. Jesus offers no philosophy of the plan of 
salvation ; he does not philosphize concerning faith, 
or prayer, or immortality. 

As to evil, Jesus tells men what evil is, shows the 
ruin it brings upon them, and points out to them 
the way of deliverance. He talks to men of their 
evil and the way to make an end of it. 

Jesus never investigates. He never doubts his 
knowledge or questions for one instant the grounds 
of it. We have no fit word for his method ; intu- 
ition is perhaps as good as any. His thinking is not 
a process ; it is like seeing, not learning, the truth; 
seeing not the outside of things as men see them, 
but the inside of them as God sees them. 

Jesus never uses those forms of logic that are ab- 
solutely necessary to all others. We are speaking 
of his ** method of thought ; '* perhaps such words 
do not apply to him at all. How did he find out 
what was true ? He did not seem to find it out at 
all; it seemed to be in him. He never seems to 
discover a truth. He does not, by reasoning from 
what is to what must be, find out what he did not 
know before. 

In geometry we begin with what we call '^axioms,'' 
a few simple principles that need no proof. We 
call them ''self-evident/' because we see that they 



His Method of Thought. 67 

are true, that they must be true, the instant we 
know what the words mean that state them to us. 
Upon these we build our geometry and all the sci- 
ence and art that rest upon it or grow out of it. 
When we prove one thing we did not know by some- 
thing that, being self-evident, needs no proof, we put 
the two together and prove a third, and so on as 
far as we can go. Jesus would have known the third, 
and the hundredth, and the last, as he knew the first 
— without this building-up process. He would know 
all that the axioms contain as we know the axioms. 
For want of fitter words we have been speaking 
of his ** method of thought." As these words have 
significance to mere men, Jesus, it seems, had no 
method of thought ; he did not, as men must do, 
think to know ; he knew things. Perhaps this is in 
part what he meant when he said to Pilate, *^ I am 
the Truth." 



68 The Man of Galilee, 




CHAPTER VIII. 

'' NEVER MAN SPAKE LIKE THIS MAN.*' 

JE will consider the method of Jesus as a 
teacher, and the word is appropriate now. 
He did have a method in teaching men 
the truths that he knew without reasoning about 
them, the truths that he did not discover by inves- 
tigation, the truths he knew because they were in 
him. 

To begin with, Jesus does not seek to prove 
things to his hearers ; he announces what is truth 
as God announces truth. He is a divine dogmatist ; 
he offers no proof of what he sets forth as truth. 

No other teacher ever taught as Jesus did. What 
we may call his logic-form is pre-eminently the 
teacher's ; but no teacher ever employed it as did 
he who came out of Nazareth. He reasons from 
the weaker to the stronger reason. He does not 
reason to prove truth to others, as he does not 
reason to discover it for himself, but to teach it. 
This is the form of reasoning we find in all his par- 
ables and illustrations. His arguments are designed 
to help his learners understand what he meant and 



''Never Man Spake Like This Man:' 69 

to impress it upon their minds. He never seems 
concerned about proving to men the truth of what 
he said, but only to make it plain and to enforce it. 
Many illustrations might be given; let a few suffice. 

One day Jesus was teaching his disciples the 
doctrine of God's providence. He makes no argu- 
ment to prove that there is a providence ; he does 
not seek to convince them, but only to help them 
realize in their own thoughts the all-embracing, un- 
failing, and gracious providence that kept them. 
And he did this not to make them understand the 
doctrine of providence, but to help them trust in it. 
He seeks to bring home to them the truth he does 
not seek to prove. How does he set about it ? 
What is his method? Not a mere man's method. 
It is indeed an absolutely simple method ; but no 
other teacher, who has not learned it of him, has 
used it so in discoursing of such truths. 

He begins with what they knew : *' Consider the 
lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you that 
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these.'' They knew the lilies — that is, they 
were used to seeing them, the little flowers so com- 
mon, so insignificant, yet so beautiful. Jesus con- 
eludes : '' Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of 
the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into 



70 The Man of Galilee. 

the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye 
of little faith?'' 

In the same way he reasons of sparrows and men. 
He would inspire his disciples with the courage that 
has its root in faith in God's loving and unfailing 
providence. He says to them the great God not 
only feeds the poor little birds, but cares for them, 
*^ Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one 
of them shall not fall on the ground without your 
Father. But the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more 
value than many sparrows.'' 

He would teach his disciples the folly of forget- 
ting what is essential in brooding anxieties about 
small things: "And which of you with taking 
thought [worrying] can add to his stature one cubit ? 
If ye then be not able to do that thing which is 
least, why take ye thought for the rest ? . . . There- 
fore I say unto you. Take no thought for your life, 
what ye shall eat ; neither for the body, what ye 
shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the 
body is more than raiment." 

He would make men see how perfectly simple 
and unmysterious is prayer and how absolutely 
certain it is that God will answer. Have we not 
listened to mere men — preachers they called them- 
selves, yet doing, it may be, the best they could—- 



^' Never Man Spake Like This Man:' Vl 

mystifying simple-minded people and little children 
— themselves most of all — with tortuous disqui- 
sitions concerning the '^subjective" and ''object- 
ive '' results of their devotions ! Answering infi- 
dels, they suppose ! 

Jesus makes no argument about the nature of 
prayer ; he has not a word to prove its reasonable- 
ness or to harmonize the doctrine with law. He 
says : "Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and 
ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you. For every one that asketh, receiveth ; and 
he that seeketh, findeth ; and to him that knocketh 
it shall be opened." 

How does he prove what he affirms ? He does 
not prove it ; he brings it home to them : '' What 
man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, 
will he give him a stone? Or, if he ask a fish, will 
he give him a serpent ? ** 

Every hearer, whether parent or child, answered 
out of his heart, ''There is not such a man among 
us." Jesus concludes : " If ye then, being evil, knov/ 
how to give good gifts unto your children, how 
much more shall your Father which is in heaven 
give good things to them that ask him?*' 

The cold and cruel Pharisees, playing at religion 
and seeking their ow^n, complained one day that 
Jesus healed a poor maimed man on the Sabbath 



^2 The Man of Galilee, 

day. Jesus made no argument about the nature 
of the Sabbath, He reminded them that they 
would lift a sheep out of the ditch on the Sabbath 
day, and concludes with a question that brought 
the truth home to them : '' How much then is a 
man better than a sheep ? *' 

These same people, contending about the forms 
of religion and forgetting God and man, complained 
that Jesus kept company with '* publicans and sin- 
ners," and was kind to them. In answer he told 
them of the shepherd who, missing one sheep from 
his flock of a hundred, could not be content with 
the ninety and nine, but went out into the wilder- 
ness seeking the lost one ; he told them how glad 
the shepherd was when in his arms he had tenderly 
brought it home. He told them also of the woman 
who could not rest till, with broom and candle, she 
had searched her house for the piece of money she 
had lost. He told them of her neighbors rejoicing 
with her when she had found it. Why he cared 
for publicans and sinners he made plain when he 
added : *^ I tell you there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repent- 
eth." 

Jesus would make these hard guardians of what 
they called the Church and despisers of their 
brother-men realize the Fatherhood of God. He 



''Never Man Spake Like This Man:' 73 

made no argument of the sort mere men would 
make. 

He tells them of the two sons and how glad the 
old father was when his poor prodigal got home. 
The conclusion no human heart can miss : the in- 
finite Father, infinitely better than any earthly 
father, is infinitely glad when his prodigals return 
to him. The heart that once takes in this story of 
the two sons can never again tremble and cower 
before that horribly heathen conception of God that 
makes him only an infinite terror, seated on the 
throne of the universe, to be afraid of, fled from, 
and hated forever. 

Jesus sought to encourage the most despondent 
and abject to trust in the divine justice as well as 
mercy. There is no lofty argument concerning the 
righteousness of God. He tells of the widow and 
the unjust judge, who feared not God nor regarded 
man, the judge who made a boast of heartlessness 
and apologized to himself for seeming to do a good 
deed. He grants the widow's prayer because he 
was selfish and mean ; he would not be '' wearied 
with her importunities.'' Jesus concludes: ^^ And 
shall not God avenge his own darlings who cry day 
and night unto him?" 

How clear Jesus made what mere human teach- 
ers make dark ! What even some preachers of our 



74 The Man of Galilee, 

times, too proud in their false learning to be simple 
in their methods and language, make so tiresome 
and so bewildering to hungry souls who ask for 
bread and get chaff! 

We will not understand how unlike the methods 
of mere men is the method of Jesus till we have 
wearied ourselves with what they call reasonings ; 
till we have come to understand that no man can 
teach religion who rejects the methods of Jesus for 
what he thinks are the methods of what he calls 
logic and philosophy, truly understanding neither. 

What we may call his manner, as distinguished 
from his method of teaching, differences Jesus from 
mere men. No great teacher, unless it be some one 
who has learned of him the true secret of teach- 
ing—and how far below the Teacher the best and 
wisest fall! — ever before or since has the manner 
of Jesus. 

There is a sort of fatality about men's teaching. 
Vanity or ignorance makes them seek to appear 
profound when they are only obscure. What an 
unspeakable relief and blessing it would bring to all 
churches and schools if pastors and teachers would 
only study the method of Jesus and seek to imitate 
the simplicity of Jesus ! Teachers, not a few of 
them, burden and bewilder their pupils with the 
dead lumber of learning that is not knowledge ; 



''Never Man Spake Like This Man:' 75 

preachers, not a few of them, mystify and mislead 
their hearers with reasonings, philosophies, and 
argumentations, mere war of words for the most 
part, that are not gospel nor life. When Jesus 
talked of the deepest and highest questions, of God 
and man, of rights and wTongs, of life and death, 
of time and eternity, of heaven and hell, it is said, 
** The common people heard him gladly/' This 
could never be said of even the good Socrates, or 
the great Plato ; for the '' common people " could 
not understand them. 

It is indeed a rare thing that the *^ common 
people '* hear '' gladly *' a teacher of science, philos- 
ophy, or religion whom the uncommon people call 
great. As a rule, the greater one is, as men meas- 
ure greatness, the less do '* common people '' hear 
him ** gladly,'* and least of all when he speaks or 
writes upon the very greatest of themes. Is it be- 
cause such teachers are not themselves brothers to 
the common people ? One reason is the great men 
do not truly understand what they teach. And 
herein is a reason for patience. ■ 

Perhaps, for the most part, the great ones do the 
best they can. It seems that, when a mere man 
seeks to think profoundly or to speak strongly, 
he must fall into obscurity. This obscurity cannot 
be due to any inherent difficulty in the truth itself, 



76 The Man of Galilee. 

but to those limitations, mental and spiritual, that 
belong to mere human teachers. But Jesus taught 
the greatest truths in language as simple and clear 
as when he spoke of the most famiHar duties of 
daily life. His manner is as easy and his words as 
plain when speaking of immortality as when telling 
men to be honest and to *' love one another." 

Compare the Sermon on the Mount and the 
writings of the greatest and best of men who have 
discoursed upon these themiCs. How perfectly 
simple and transparent and easy the manner and 
style of Jesus ! How complex and dark and diffi- 
cult the manner and style of men ! How it should 
shame mere men into meek simplicity when they 
read of Jesus, the divine Teacher, '' The common 
people heard him gladly ! " 

After all, it may be that our method of thought 
is as unfitted for understanding the Gospel as our 
method of teaching is unfitted for expounding it. 
It may be that if we worried ourselves less with 
what men have written of his words — too often 
trying to read into his teachings thin philosophies ; 
if we brooded more upon his words and less upon 
men's notions of his words, we would understand 
Jesus better. Then we also could teach the people. 
Then, it may be, the ^* common people" would hear 
us ^^gladly.'* If we preached his ''text'' more and 



^' Never Man- Spake Like This Man:' T7 

books about his '' text '' less we would preach 
more truth that saves and less philosophy that 
bewilders. 

In speaking of the method and manner of Jesus 
there is another matter, not easy to discuss, that 
should be mentioned ; I refer to the effect upon 
himself of his thoughts and words. 

There is a divine calmness in him never seen in 
mere men ; that is impossible to them. In this also 
he stands apart from men. 

His greatest discourses are without intellectual 
heats. This is very wonderful to me. He shows 
himself to be the tenderest-hearted teacher who 
ever sought to lead men out of darkness into light. 
We know that he is not cold of heart ; we know 
how deep is his compassion on men ; how infinite 
his concern for them. But he delivers the most 
tremendous truths with the most perfect composure 
and balance of spirit. If a mere man were to see 
clearly for the first time what the Sermon on the 
Mount, the third chapter of John, the parable of 
the Prodigal, and a score of other discourses and 
revelations like them really signify; if a mere man 
were, so to speak, to come suddenly upon such 
thoughts, such conceptions, so vast, deep and high, 
it would unbalance him. His brain would be on 
fire and his heart would break with holy excite- 



is The Man of Galilee, 

ment. But Jesus speaks these truths with perfect 
calmness ; they were not new thoughts to him ; 
there was no effort in order to grasp them or to 
express them. Yet Jesus was full of sympathy. 
He wept with the sisters at the grave of Lazarus and 
bewailed the fate of Jerusalem with sobs and tears. 

You have read a story of Sir Isaac Newton, 
which, whether it be historically true or false, well 
illustrates, for it is very like a man, what is here 
brought to your attention, as showing how Jesus 
differs from a mere man. When Sir Isaac had 
nearly finished his deep and long-continued studies 
of the laws which govern the movement of the 
heavenly bodies, and was near enough the end 
of his great mathematical calculations to foresee 
the result and to realize that it would justify his 
sublime speculations concerning the controlling law 
of the material universe, he became so excited — 
cold philosopher and trained to self-control as he 
was — that he could not complete the simple proc- 
esses involved in his formula. It was necessary to 
call in a friend to finish the easy work for him ; 
for the moment the great astronomer was out of 
balance. 

Sir Isaac's was exactly a mere man's way ; great 
inventors have gone mad when they were within 
one step of triumph. 



"-Never Man Spake Like This Man:' 79 

But Jesus was calm when speaking, in the sim- 
plest way, of the greatest truths of life and the 
most stupendous events that await eternity for 
their unfolding. 

No wonder those who, on one occasion, were 
sent to lay hands on him had only this answer 
when they returned to their masters without him : 
** Never man spake like this man." 



80 The Man of Galilee, 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE SON OF MAN AND SIN. 

I HEN we compare the work Jesus proposed 
to do in the world with the schemes of 
earth*s greatest ones we cannot classify 
him with mere men. 

What did he think he came into the world to do? 
What did he consider his mission to be ? 

We cannot be in the least doubt for the answer ; 
there was no confusion in his thought, no ambiguity 
in his words. If we ask what Jesus thought his 
mission was we will easily find the answer — unpar- 
alleled by the thought of any, absolutely unique, 
stupendous, but as unmistakable in meaning as sim- 
ple in the form of expression. 

We will answer in his own words: '^The Son of 
man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.** 
*^ I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to 
repentance.'* "' God sent not his Son into the world 
to condemn the world, but that the world through 
him might be saved.'* '' I came not to judge the 
world, but to save the world." More forcibly, if 
possible, than in his words, his conception of his 



The Son of Man and Sin 81 

mission is shown by his work, his living, and his 
dying. St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, gives 
us in a simple statement the whole history; it is, in 
a line, the biography of the God-man, '* He went 
about doing good.*' 

That Jesus should have seen in the world evil 
that needed to be remedied, that he should have 
tried to remedy the evil he saw, does not, in itself, 
difference him from good and wise men who have 
observed the facts of human life and have deplored 
human miseries. All the great teachers and reform- 
ers have recognized evil in. the world, and many of 
them have distinctly recognized this evil as moral 
evil. The doctrine of Jesus is peculiar in this ; all 
the evil that is in the world is moral evil, and all 
moral evil is, at its root, sin, and sin, considered as 
a quahty in man's character, is a state of being that 
is out of harmony with God ; considered as a fact, 
it is life in violation of God's law. The bad man 
is, in his spirit, at enmity with God ; in his life he 
breaks God's law. He loves evil because evil is in 
him ; his life is wicked because his heart is bad. 

And Jesus comes to take away sin ; to deliver 

men from it, its penalty, and its power. Said the 

angel to Mary: *^ Thou shalt call his name Jesus, 

for he shall save his people from their sins." 

In the view of Jesus sin is the one evil ; deliver- 
6 



82 The Man of Galilee. 

ance from sin is deliverance from all evil ; it is sal- 
vation. He struck at sin as the root of all possible 
evil ; he recognized no evil that was in man's cir- 
cumstances, as if his evil came out of fate or in 
some way invincible by him ; it is all of sin. 

Wherefore Jesus does not set about bettering 
man's circumstances, by direct effort improving the 
sanitary, economic, political, or social conditions 
of life ; he works upon man himself. Whatever 
improves man's condition is, in the doctrine of Jesus, 
to be desired ; but it is not enough to make man 
comfortable; he must be made good. He teaches 
that all that is truly good and needful will come to 
men who are delivered from sin, and that no real 
good can come to him whose sin remains in him. 
First, last, all the time, Jesus makes deliverance 
from sin the one thing needful — the chief good. 

As his manner was, he does not argue about it ; 
he states his doctrine positively, '* with authority," 
as one knowing the whole truth of the case. There 
is no qualifying word to tone down his statements 
and to leave place for retreat from possible mis- 
takes. 

His doctrine he taught and illustrated in every 
possible way. It is in his more formal discourses, 
his briefest comments on men arid things, his most 
occasional conversations and most incidental re- 



The Son of Man and Sin 83 

marks. His doctrine is in all his efforts to do men 
good, as it is in every warning and every promise. 

And there is never a shadow of doubt, a suspicion 
of hesitation. From his first word to the last, from 
the beatitudes to the prayer on the cross, it is 
always the same thing; man's trouble is all in his 
sin ; his only salvation is deliverance from sin. 

It comes out in the most incidental way. When 
the penitent Magdalene washed his feet with her 
tears, at Simon's table, he said not a word about her 
lost social position or of its possible restoration. 
He said, *' Thy sins are forgiven ; thy faith hath 
saved thee ; go in peace.'' 

When the four kind and loving friends of Caper- 
naum — whose names we would like to know — had 
brought their palsied neighbor to Peter's house, and 
had at last, with much trouble, through the broken 
roof laid him down at the feet of Jesus, the first 
w^ords were not about palsy and healing, but about 
sin and salvation : ** Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." 
This is what the story of the penitent publican, 
crying out, " God be merciful to me a sinner," 
means. It is what the story of the prodigal means ; 
it is what the whole life and teaching of Jesus 
mean. 

We must notice particularly that the mere con- 
ception of a divine incarnation is not peculiar to the 



84 The Man of Galilee, 

story of Jesus. The notion of incarnation, the idea 
of the gods taking a form of flesh and manifesting 
themselves to men, is in the traditions of ahnost 
every nation. It has been said, hastily, I believe, 
that there are some races, at least some tribes, so 
low in development as to have no idea of God what- 
ever. It is easy to be mistaken in such matters ; it 
is difficult for a cultivated man to find out what a 
savage really thinks about any subject, least of all 
his religion. Perhaps the language difficulty is the 
least bar to understanding in such a case ; the dif- 
ferences between men are not measured by differ- 
ences in speech only. It is certain that the concep- 
tion of God is, in some form, in most nations. I 
believe it is in all. And in every nation there is 
some sort of notion of divine manifestation. 

The attempt to represent the gods in stone, in 
metal, in wood, or even in rude drawings and paint- 
ings, comes after a traditional belief has long held 
its place in men's thoughts of their manifestation in 
some visible and tangible form. 

It is not always a human form ; it is generally not 
a human form, except as it is part of the conception : 
as in the eagle-headed Belus of Babylon, as in the 
wnnged bulls, with the head of a man and the feet 
of a lion, that Layard found in the ruins of Nineveh. 
These composite images represented ideas of the 



The Son of Man and Sin, 85 

gods, not facts concerning them. Thus the image 
found in the ruins of Nineveh represented strength, 
swiftness, courage, intelligence. But the ideas ex- 
pressed in these strange and grotesque forms grew 
out of traditions of divine manifestation, of incarna- 
tion. 

All the mythologies tell us of incarnations ; but 
the idea of divine incarnation in the story of the 
evangelists differs, not in some incidents, but in all 
essentials from all others. One unique fact, as has 
heretofore, in a different connection, been pointed 
out, is that Jesus was simply a man w^ho, as to his 
appearance, had absolutely nothing that was pecul- 
iar. Neither stature, beauty, swiftness, nor strength 
is attributed to Jesus. 

We might speak of the limitations that go with 
other conceptions of gods incarnate. They are 
specialized by race and localized by country. This 
thought has been illustrated elsewhere. It may 
answer now simply to remind you that Vishnu is 
Hindustanee, Isis and Osiris Egyptian, Odin and 
Thor Scandinavian. Not one of them has relations 
to the whole human race. But Jesus, who calls 
himself '* the Son of man,*' is of all, and belongs 
to all. 

But the most notable difference to be considered 
now, that which alone would place Jesus apart from 



86 The Man of Galilee, 

all others, whether men or legendary gods, is in the 
end he proposed to accomplish. The gods became 
incarnate and appeared to men, or dwelt among 
them, to do many and very different things ; Jesus 
to do just one thing, and to do what no other ever 
proposed to do, or so much as thought of doing. 
He, *' the Son of man," was of all and for all, and 
he proposes an end that concerns all. The evil he 
would remove from all is not a Hebrew trouble; it 
is in the human race. 

This is plainer in comparison. Vishnu, the su- 
preme god of Hindustanee mythology, has conde- 
scended, so the old stories tell us, to almost innu- 
merable incarnations. But for what end ? Always 
to work some prodigies ; to do some strange things 
on the plane of men's lives ; to do things affecting 
men's circumstances, not men's character. He comes 
to do something in a limited sphere ; something for 
his people, Hindustanee people, not for the whole 
race of man. Vishnu, when he comes in mercy, 
comes to remedy external conditions ; he delivers 
from pestilence, famine, wild beasts, poisonous ser- 
pents. When he comes in wrath it is to crush his 
enemies. 

In mythology the very conception men had of 
the coming of the gods grew out of their circum- 
stances. Thus in India the conception of evil itself 



The Son of Man and Sin, 87 

was determined by conditions peculiar to India. 
With them evil grew out of the jungles where pesti- 
lence was bred, serpents abounded, and fierce man- 
eating tigers hid themselves and waited for their 
prey. It was determined by those conditions of 
life peculiar to dense populations, subject to the 
scourges that followed war, and evil natural con- 
ditions — plague and famine. 

The evil Jesus considered was peculiar to no peo- 
ple and to no country ; it did not grow out of 
natural conditions; it was in man himself, and it 
was sin. 

Among warlike nations the gods came down to 
take part in mere national matters ; they fought the 
battles of their friends and punished their enemies. 
Your Homer tells you all this in the story of the 
siege of Troy. Virgil tells you the same thing ; your 
classical authors are full of it. The poor Indians 
and negro tribes tell of such incarnations. 

It was this very human conception of divine in- 
carnation that filled the national imagination and 
sustained the national hopes before Jesus came. 
Such an incarnation they were longing for when 
they rejected him because they could not use him 
for their ends ; it is a conception that to this day 
lingers in Hebrew thought and hope. They looked 
and prayed for a divine warrior-king who would 



88 The Man of Galilee, 

lead their armies, restore their nation, and give it 
dominion over the world. 

How incredible the idea that the evangelists have 
only given us a reflection of popular sentiment, the 
outgrowth of national traditions ! These sentiments 
and traditions were utterly spoiled by the sort of 
incarnation the evangelists describe. The nation 
resented unto death the conception Jesus had of his 
mission to men ; before such a king as Jesus they 
preferred the Caesar they hated ; they put to death 
the man who only sought to save them from their 
sins because he disappointed them in their patri- 
otic ambitions. 

Speaking in a general way, the gods of the na- 
tions, when they become incarnate, come to do a 
man's sort of work. They work upon the outside 
of life ; they seek to deliver man from external evils 
and to improve his external conditions. The 
^* twelve labors of Hercules '' tell us what men 
thought they needed a divine man to do ; the evan- 
gelists tell us what the divine Man thought men 
needed that he should do. When the gods of 
mythology become incarnate they work in the realm 
of circumstances ; Jesus speaks only of the man 
himself, his heart, his. character, and seeks only to 
make him good. 

Here is, therefore, the essential difference: his 



The Son of Man and Sin. 89 

conception of evil, and back of that, of course, his 
conception of man himself. 

As we have seen, in the thought of Jesus the evil 
and the good, the woes and the blessings of hu- 
manity are in man himself; they are not in exter- 
nals, but internals ; not in circumstances, but in 
character. Jesus does not, therefore, dwell upon 
poverty or wealth, sickness or health, enemies or 
friends, contempt or favor, servitude or freedom, 
early death or long life. He is not concerned about 
any circumstances whatever that merely determine 
man's external life ; he is concerned about man him- 
self. If there be any real good or any real evil the 
good and the evil are inside, not outside the man. 

Let us note, too, Jesus'never places man's moral 
evil, which is the one evil he recognizes, in mere 
ignorance of Iruth, as if instruction and merely 
changing man's opinions could remedy the evil ; he 
always places it in that something that alienates 
man's love from God, that something that Jesus 
calls sin, that something that is sin because it an- 
tagonizes the pure will of God. And Jesus teaches 
that the very constitution of man's nature is such 
that no bettering of his external conditions can 
bring any real help whatsoever; that so long as 
man is out of harmony with God there can be for 
him, neither in this world nor the next, any real 



90 The Man of Galilee, 

good. This he meant in the question that makes a 
man outweigh a world: *^ What shall it profit a man 
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul? " 

Jesus took very great pains to teach men that in 
themselves, and not in their circumstances, was their 
real evil and their real good. He used almost 
every form of speech to teach them to think of a 
man as a man, and not as the sport of circum- 
stances. 

For poverty Jesus did not care; for wealth he 
had no respect. The story of the barn-builder 
gives us his solemn judgment upon a man who 
achieved very great worldly success ; who was what 
most men long and strive to be — rich and great. 
But he was a man out of harmony with God — rich 
in purse, bankrupt in soul. Jesus, in the face of all 
human opinion, plainly calls such a man **a fool.'* 

The drama of the rich man and Lazarus turns 
the light of both worlds upon the question of man*s 
chief and only good, and emphasizes, by the despair 
of the prince in hell, his verdict upon the case of 
the prosperous and self-satisfied barn-builder, in 
whose thoughts and plans neither his own soul nor 
the God who made him had any place. 

Always — whether speaking of his own personal 
work or in instructing his disciples as to their w^ork 



The Son of Man and Sin, 91 

— Jesus looks to bettering men, not their condi- 
tions. He did not care for conditions, except as 
they connected men with influences that made 
them good or evil ; he cared for men only. Hence 
he always stressed character and nothing else. 

Character, in the teaching of Jesus, is all ; it is 
both test and measure of what a man is, and there 
is no other test or measure for which man ought to 
care, for which God does care. 

The amazement of comfortable and cultured 
Nicodemus shows us that these ideas of Jesus were 
not borrowed from the men of his time and race. 

Summing up what is here presented as to the 
conception Jesus had of his mission to men, a con- 
ception as unique as his own character: only one 
thing he hated and sought to destroy — sin ; only 
one thing he loved for man and sought to bestow — 
goodness. 

Only one thing his true disciples hate — sin ; only 
one thing is worth striving, living and dying for — 
goodness : which is another name for Christ-likeness. 



92 The Man of Galilee, 



1SB8 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE END HE PROPOSED AND 
SET ABOUT. 

ET US now consider briefly the magnitude 
of the work Jesus proposed to do as the 
end of his mission to men. 

It is the baldest commonplace to say the work 
Jesus proposed to accompHsh transcends all the 
dreams of the boldest imagination. 

It is a deep offense that once, at St. Helena, 
Napoleon contrasted the work Jesus proposed to 
do with the dreams that he and Alexander and 
Julius Caesar had indulged of world-changing con- 
quests. It is no great thing that selfish, ambitious, 
and gifted men have dreamed of conquering what 
we call the world by force. Csesar, Alexander, 
Mohammed, Napoleon, even poor wild El Mahdi 
of the desert, may dream such dreams. But what 
are such dreams when we think of Jesus and the 
work he proposed to do and set himself to do? 

We do not like to think of the dreams of ambi- 
tion, the loftiest that ever dared or planned a world- 
wide scheme of conquest, when we are listening 



What He Proposed and Set About 93 

to Jesus concerning his mission to men. Jesus 
speaks of the conquest of all nations, not as they 
then were, but of all nations for all times. It is 
nothing less and nothing else than the moral and 
spiritual re-creation of the human race, the abso- 
lute conquest of the love of men's hearts for time 
and eternity. 

Say what men may of Jesus, it was worth dying, 
in shame and agony, upon a Roman cross to have 
had such thoughts, even for one moment. No 
mere man ever had such thoughts, could originate 
such thoughts, or for long hold such thoughts in 
his grasp. The end Jesus proposed to himself is as 
far above the noblest thoughts of the noblest men 
as the splendors of the midnight heavens are above 
the cheap glitter of a toy-shop. 

The thought of saving a race was as extra-human 
and superhuman as the thought of the universe; 
the saving of a race, the saving of one man, is as 
far beyond man s power as the creation itself. 

We cannot grasp the conception Jesus had of the 
work he came to do ; it makes us dizzy when we 
contemplate it steadily; it is like trying to realize 
the distances of the fixed stars. Its splendor blinds 
us; it is like looking at the unclouded sun. 

No one, whatever may be his opinion of Jesus or 
attitude toward him, can question that he believed 



94 The Man of Galilee, 

absolutely in the success of the work he proposed 
to accompHsh. His plans embrace the entire race 
of man and require eternity for their consumma- 
tion, but he speaks of these stupendous things with 
the perfect assurance and simplicity of a little 
child: *'And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto me." 

It were hard to say which is most unlike a mere 
man : the character of the work he proposed to do, 
the magnitude of it, the unhasting zeal with which 
he set about it, or his absolute confidence, calmness, 
and simplicity of manner in telling men about it. 

It is impossible to write worthily on such a 
theme. Let us, if only for a moment, try to see how 
unlike a mere man it all is. 

Jesus considers the sources of man's misery and 
the nature of his remedy. It is all open, clear, and 
certain to his thoughts. He has not the least 
possible doubt that he has gone to the root of the 
subject and absolutely knows it all. What has 
confounded all human thinkers is in the sunlight to 
his vision. When the strongest and best of men 
tries to mine into the depths of man's nature and 
misery he labors heavily and breathes hard, like a 
diver in his coat of mail down in the deep sea. 
Wh'Cn a man attempts to tell what he thinks he 
sees in the shadows from which he cannot escape, 



What He Proposed and Set About. 95 

while meditating these difficult and to him impossible 
themes, he is in sore travail for words ; utterance is 
heavy and confused. But Jesus makes no effort to 
grasp the truth ; his thoughts are clear and com- 
plete to him ; his language simple and clear to us. 
It is like this: *'Out of the heart proceed evil 
thoughts." Therefore, there must be, not reforma- 
tion only, but change. ''Ye must be born again,'' 
is his first word to Nicodemus and to all who come 
to him. 

There is another thought to be considered at this 
point in taking note of characteristics which differ- 
ence Jesus from men. A mere man discovering in 
his reflections the abysmal depths of man's spiritual 
malady, a mere man clearly comprehending, as no 
man ever yet comprehended, the evil of sin, would be 
crushed by despair. Many good men, seeing but a 
little way into this darkness, have been made mad 
by what they saw. Where it is not morbid senti- 
ment or philosophic play this is the origin of pes- 
simism. 

There is nothing of this in Jesus. He saw it all ; 
its uttermost deeps were open to his eyes ; but he 
faces the trouble with infinite calmness. He an- 
nounces a remedy adequate to the evil. He speaks 
to a weary and sin- stricken race : *' Come unto me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 



96 The Man of Galilee, 

give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn 
of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ; and ye 
shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy 
and my burden is light.'' 

And this is what he offers to a sinning and 
troubled world. He says he will change men, make 
them new and good, make them well again. 

But there are no lunatic airs, common to dream- 
ers and enthusiasts. No mere man could think such 
thoughts and earnestly say such things without 
lunacy. But there never was such perfect mental 
and spiritual equilibrium as we see plainly in Jesus. 
He speaks of the moral conquest of the entire race; 
he asks for the perfect love of men, that he may save 
them from all evil by saving them from their sins ; 
he speaks of his work as comprehending time and 
eternity ; he offers to the faithful immortality and 
eternal life. And his calmness of spirit is absolute ; 
his simplicity of manner is perfect. 



Never Man Planned Like This Man. 97 




CHAPTER XI. 

NEVER MAN PLANNED LIKE THIS MAN. 

HAT are we to say of the means which 
Jesus proposes to use for the accomplish- 
ment of his vast and unheard-of ends ? 

I say broadly, and with certain assurance, Jesus 
proposes none of the means which mere men would 
use ; of the sort they have always used. His plans 
and methods are utterly unlike the plans and meth- 
ods of men, except as they have learned most im- 
perfectly from him in humble and earnest efforts to 
do his will. The methods that mere men trust in — 
always trust in — he will have none of. 

Jesus utterly excludes mere force. His symbol 
is not a sword ; it is a cross. He said, ** He that 
taketh the sword shall perish by the sword." 

Some weak thinkers or insincere men have tried 
to fasten on Christianit)^ the guilt of barbarous cruel- 
ties, and many wicked and horrible deeds, perpe- 
trated by ignorant or wicked men in the holy name 
of Christ. Bad men, in the darkness of ignorance 
and in the malignity of sin, have used his name to 
force their brothers to think their thoughts. The 



98 The Man of Galilee, 

rack for Galileo was an evil thought and a wicked 
method of bad and ignorant men. But Jesus does 
not tolerate force in carrying on his work, nor per- 
secution of any sort whatsoever. 

On one occasion two of his disciples, John and 
James, were offended because a Samaritan village did 
not offer hospitality to Jesus and his friends. Then 
said the brothers, "" Lord, wilt thou that we com- 
mand fire to come down from heaven and consume 
them?" They were men, and their method was 
pure human. What Jesus said to them he says 
to all: '' But he turned and rebuked them, and said, 
Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." 

To charge upon Christianity the wicked deeds 
of those who have violated the teachings of its 
founder is like charging upon medicine the death 
of men who, in the name of medicine, have been 
doctored to their death by impostors. 

Force could not do any of his work ; it was man^s 
love that he sought ; and love cannot be forced by 
God or man. Love dies under force. The Caesars 
use force ; it is a man's way. The God-man uses 
love. 

Jesus does not trust in the purchasing power of 
wealth, or of money, its representative. He hardly 
spoke of money except to show the danger of it. 
The love of money he denounced. He taught that 



Never Man Planned Like This Man, 99 

greed of money is debasing. Getting to heaven, for 
a rich man, is like a camel's passing through the eye 
of a needle — only *^ harder." The only rich man 
who volunteered discipleship turned sorrowfully 
away when told to sell his estates and give the pro- 
ceeds to the poor. Jesus warns his disciples with 
gracious vehemence of the folly and danger of lay- 
ing up treasure upon earth. Personally he had no 
concern about wealth, except to warn his disciples 
of the terrible spiritual dangers that lurk in riches. 
He provides no treasure for carrying on his work. 
He taught that the love of money is the source of 
more moral evils than any other thing in the world. 

It is a man*s way to bribe and buy favor and suc- 
cess. Satan believes in the power of money abso- 
lutely. To Jesus himself the devil offered the sub- 
mission of the world if he would onty pay him 
allegiance. 

Men of our time will not believe what Jesus says 
upon these subjects, and their prompt rejection of 
his doctrine is evidence enough that in rejecting 
from his plans the power of money to buy influence 
he did not plan like a man. For money, as money, 
Jesus felt only contempt. He taught that wealth 
held for its own sake, or used only in selfishness, 
shows its possessor to be a ^' fool ;" that it both de- 
grades and damns. In his view it can in one way 



100 The Man of Galilee, 

only be even honorable to be rich — to use riches un- 
selfishly and usefully. Even then it is dangerous. 

In his day, as they do now, men of the world 
reviled his doctrine ; ^^ the Pharisees, who were cov- 
etous, derided him.'* 

For the teachings of Jesus concerning money 
and its right uses few, even of those who claim to 
be his disciples and friends, have perfect respect. 
He seems to them to be '' visionary " in his views, 
and his words seem to be '' unbusinesslike.'' A man 
says to himself, '' Jesus says money is dangerous to 
my soul ; he tells me that I am only a steward hold- 
ing money in trust, and that I must give it away to 
those who need. I cannot carry on business on his 
plan ; I will risk my plan." 

Such a man does not believe what Jesus teaches; 
unless one should so far qualify the statement as 
to say — unless it be that gold has so blinded his 
eyes that he does not understand what the plain 
words of the Master really mean. 

From his method Jesus excludes diplomacy, the 
art of playing one selfishness against another. ** Let 
your communication be. Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for 
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.'* 
His disciples must, indeed, be *^ wise as serpents 
and harmless as doves ;" but they must live the truth. 
Deception is abhorrent to him. The Talleyrands 



Never Man Planned Like This Man, 101 

understand and use diplomatic arts. The *' Berlin 
Conference" is a modern instance; it illustrates a 
man's method. Not necessarily a bad method, but 
a man's. 

Consider a phrase we see every day in the papers, 
** The balance of power in Europe." See how the 
*' great powers" and the small ones give themselves 
to all manner of intrigues, using wily state-craft to 
circumvent, deceive, coerce, hold their own, or rob 
their weaker neighbors, or by combination reduce 
the stronger ones. 

Many well-founded complaints have been brought 
against ^^ priest-craft," which is state craft in church 
circles. Its crimes, by the ill-informed and the evil- 
disposed, have been laid at the door of Christianity. 
No charge can be more unjust ; it is as unjust as to 
blame Jesus w^ith the treachery of Judas. 

Priest-craft is an invention of men ; it has no more 
place in the plans of Jesus than state-craft ; he con- 
siders neither, except as he may overrule them and 
force them against their nature into his service, so 
that the cunning as well as the " wrath of man shall 
praise him." 

What is called the " Church " is not synonymous 
with '' kingdom of heaven." Men of worldly tem- 
per may within church circles do their own work ; 
they do not do Christ's work by diplomatic arts. 



102 The Man of Galilee, 

Jesus not only excludes appeal to all forms of 
selfishness, he antagonizes them to the death. His 
first and last word, his ultimatum, is, " If any man 
will be my disciple, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross daily and follow me/' His first word 
is a challenge to surrender the stronghold of self- 
will. Till surrender is complete there can be no 
peace. A mere man would be counted insane — and 
justly enough — to talk of advancing any little scheme 
of improving things about him in any such way — 
and because it is so utterly unlike a man's way. 

Jesus offers no inducement to mere self-interest. 
He promises absolutely nothing of the things the 
world is in sore travail and anxiety to secure. He 
does not promise pleasure, or honor, or fortune, or 
power, or health, or long life. He does say God 
will see to it that true Christians shall have w^hat is 
good for them. But in many ways he makes plain 
that ** what is good for them '' will often include 
what the world calls evil. 

Jesus nowhere so much as seems to think of what 
men of the world call good ; the things they strive for 
so, and give their time and strength and lives to gain. 

It is an utter mistake to suppose that Jesus offers 
worldly prosperity as a reward for duty, a premium on 
piety. Those who try to read this meaning into an 
apostle's writings misread him ; it is against all his 



Never Man Planned Like This Man, 103 

teaching. It is true, doubtless, as Paul says, '' God- 
liness is profitable unto all things, having the promise 
of the life that now is and of that which is to come." 
But ^'the promise of the life that nowvis " cannot, 
in the kingdom of Jesus, mean worldly things; it 
means goodness, God's peace in man's soul, Christ- 
likeness in man's heart here and now. Undoubtedly 
religion makes this a better world, but not because 
it makes man richer, but purer. 

If we beHeve in Jesus and in his work in the world 
at all we may, if we wish, find out what he meant 
by what has followed. It is true that the religion 
that makes men good restrains them and protects 
them from the follies and sins that waste energy and 
squander fortune ; but it is utterly misleading and 
confusing to try to read into the w^ords of Jesus the 
idea that he appeals to any mere selfish interest by 
promising fortune to the good. It is like making 
worldly riches the reward of meekness and long 
life the premium on obedience to parents. 

Some very rich people have been deeply religious, 
but in spite of their wealth. It is as Jesus said, 
^^ All things are possible with God." It was he also 
who said, '' How hardly shall they that have riches 
enter into the kingdom of God." But Christ's best 
ones have not succeeded in this world according to 
money or other such gauges. 



104 The Man of Galilee, 

If the work of Jesus— who excludes from his plans 
force and the cunning of diplomacy, who denounces 
all selfishness and ignores all self-interest, who de- 
mands absolute self-surrender at the very outset — is 
^ to abide in the world, is to succeed, then it must 
go against the tide, and not with It. 

At one time Jesus seemed to think his hearers 
might possibly misapprehend him, and he told them 
plainly that poverty, trouble, sorrow, persecutions 
in this world, awaited them if they followed him. 
And he told them plainly, also, that if they would 
have any part in him and with him they must flinch 
at nothing — that they must die if need be. When 
they did understand him ^* many went back from 
following him." And many are joining their com- 
pany to this day. 

What he said to the young ruler he said to all ; 
nay, says to us all to-day : "' The foxes have holes ; 
and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of 
man hath not where to lay his head.'* And we do 
him the deep dishonor of believing that he spoke the 
words of mere sentiment ! He could only mean by 
his words to the rich young man, '' Come with me 
and welcome ; I will help you, I will save you ; but 
for this world I can promise you nothing." He him- 
self was always a poor man, and his poverty was 
not an accident in his manner of life. There never 



Never Man Flanaed Like This Man. 105 

was a man too poor to be a friend to Jesus, never a 
man so rich that he could find special favor in those 
eyes that were ** single " and *^ full of light." 

Jesus could not have offered holiness to men as 
the chief good of man, with worldly blessings as a 
reason for being good ; it would have spoiled the 
Gospel. He never promised that his disciples should 
be better off in this world than he was. He asked 
them one day, '' Shall the servant be above his lord, 
the disciple above his Master ? '' 

But we explain all this away. 

Jesus was not indulging sentiment when he taught 
his disciples that following him meant a self-renun- 
ciation that would brave all things. He distinctly 
told them to expect persecutions and tribulations. 
And some persuade themselves that he was speak- 
ing only for those who were then his disciples ; that 
such ideas do not fit civilized times and countries. 
An apostle, being a mere man, might well enough 
give his ^^ judgment" as to what best suited an ex- 
isting condition of life and society ; but Jesus, who 
belongs to all times, speaks no word of simply local 
and temporary significance and importance. 

It was so certain that suffering and persecution 
of some sort would follow fidelity that Jesus gave 
his disciples and all who should come after them a 
test by which they might judge of their personal 



106 The Man of Galilee. 

fidelity to him : '•' Woe unto you when all men shall 
speak well of you/* Can we imagine that Jesus 
did not mean such words for all men, of all times 
and countries ? 

He knew how his friends would need to stand 
firm, and how fearful the pressure of temptation 
would be to deny him. 

He told them they would *^ for his sake" be 
" brought before kings,'* and that '' some of them 
would be killed.'* But he told them not to be afraid ; 
they were to fear God and no other whatever. 

One day Jesus was urging his disciples to be 
faithful and courageous in proclaiming his whole 
truth to the world, and thus he encouraged and 
exhorted them : ** And I say unto you, my friends, 
Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after 
that have no more that they can do. But I will 
forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which 
after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell : 
yea, I say unto you, Fear him.** 

Instead of trusting in any wise to self interest 
Jesus demands its crucifixion. When he says, ** If 
any man will be my disciple, let him denj^ himself 
and take up his cross daily and follow me ; '* when 
he demands self-renunciation absolute ; when he 
says that no interest possible in this world — whether 
houses, lands, father, mother, brother, sister, child, 



Never Man Planned Like This Man, 107 

or wife — must come between him and his disciples ; 
when he raises a cross by his own upon which self- 
ishness must die, he stands apart from all men. 
His method is not a man's. His plans are as dif- 
ferent from a man's as the end he proposed is above 
a man's thought and different from it. 

If no man ever spoke like Jesus no man ever 
planned like him. -— 

In considering further some things in the meth- 
ods which Jesus adopted for doing the work he pro- 
posed to himself we may mention, as different from 
a man's method, that Jesus excludes from his plans 
for discipling the world reliance upon mere argu- 
ment and force of intellect. 

Jesus left no room, not the least, for the fanatical 
superstition that his cause is to be advanced by 
ignorance. His doctrine furnishes every inspiration 
for the very highest development of mind ; and the 
best educational work of the world4s the outgrowth 
of Christian institutions. \ 

But Jesus does teach his disciples that they must 
not, in extending his kingdom, depend upon learn- 
ing, upon mere force of intellect and argument. If 
they did this they would fail. So he taught them, 
and history makes it plain to us that his disciples 
have failed when they have forgotten his teachings. 
Alas ! that it is so easy to pervert great gifts. It 



108 The Man of Galilee, 

seems to be almost as difficult not to trust in great 
gifts of genius as it is to possess great wealth with- 
out loving it. 

With the end Jesus had in view he could not 
depend upon mere learning, mental gifts, and force 
of argument. For the essential trouble is not with 
men's intellects, but their hearts. It is not that 
opinions are so wrong; it is that dispositions are so 
alienated from God. Man needs not a new opinion, 
but a new love. The task of Jesus was a far harder 
one than the correction of errors ; it was the win- 
ning of hearts. Love is free ; men may be con- 
vinced against their will, but love consents. 



Neither Theologian Nor Ecclesiastic. 109 



CHAPTER XII. 

JESUS NEITHER THEOLOGIAN NOR ECCLESIASTIC. 
ESUS did none of the thine^s a man would 




do who proposed to establish and perpet- 
uate any sort of kingdom, or school of 
beliefs, even in this world. 

- He established no institutions with formal con- 
stitutions. He did not draw up a code — not so 
much as a system of moral philosophy. He left no 
^* theological institutes," with precise definitions 
and exact limitations. Some of his true friends 
have done their best at such work ; he did not. 
Theirs is a man's way ; his was not. 

He left no formal creed ; he never mentioned 
such a thing; he did not seem to think of it at all. 
It is so much a man's way to do such things that 
we are not yet familiar with the idea that Jesus did 
not. It comes to many with a sudden surprise 
when they discover that Jesus said not a word 
about systematic theology, that to many is so 
precious. In all his words are no "articles of 
religion ; *' not a hint of them. He did not so 
much as put into form a doctrine of his own nature 



110 The Man of Galilee. 

and person. Very often and in many ways he 
spoke of himself and God, and of his relation to the 
eternal Father, but he made no definition. Often 
he spoke of himself, of the Father and of the Holy 
Ghost, but he said not a word of the '' hypostatic 
union " of three persons in one Godhead ; not a 
word of the '' economic relations '* of the Holy 
Trinity. 

Some good people, if they chance to read what 
is here put down, will be so certain in their own 
minds that Jesus did employ some of the methods 
of a mere man, in order to preserve his teachings 
in the world, that they will suspect the writer of 
irreverence ; at least of indifference, if not of some- 
thing they think less of, in what is said concerning 
** creeds" and *' theologies.'' They will be in error, 
as is common with them on such questions ; the 
writer is only stating facts that no man can deny as 
to what Jesus did and did not do. Some admirable 
and good people have not yet learned the difference 
between arguing for their Church and pleading for 
Christianity; between defending their own notions 
and expounding the teachings of Jesus. And not a 
few confound their notions about God with the fact 
of his existence, as others mistake their theory of 
inspiration for the divine authority of the Holy 
Scriptures. 



Neither Theologian Nor Ecclesiastic, ill 

Our way of teaching is a man's way. If it is the 
best we can do let us be content ; if not, let us 
amend our way. But let us not defend our way by 
pleading his example ; let us follow our way be- 
cause it is our way, if there be no better reason- 
Certain it is that the way Jesus took of teaching 
and perpetuating his doctrines was not a man's way 
in any respect whatever. 

Jesus wrote no book — not a line. He founded 
no school or other training institution ; his three 
years loving and painstaking companionship with 
his disciples was indeed a training, but it was not 
an institution. This does not mean that his friends 
should not do such things ; it is the only way they 
can do : but he did not do such things. 

He did not so much as establish a Church ; the 
Church grew out of his life as well as out of his 
teachings ; it was compacted by the sympathy of 
men, women, and little children of common beliefs 
and hopes ; above all, by the sympathy born of a 
common love for him — this far more, then as now, 
than by what they understood or believed of his 
teachings. He left for the government of the 
Church ^* no rules of order," no book of ^* disci- 
pline.'* He ordained no form of church govern- 
ment, ** with checks and balances,'' whatever. All 
those things may be good, and order in govern- 



112 The Man of Galilee. 

ment is necessary ; but he did not provide them. 
He left all such things to the common sense and 
best judgment, guided by providence and the Holy 
Spirit, of his disciples. In Church as well as State 
the principle is this : God ordains the power ; he 
does not prescribe the form ; he "^ordains govern- 
ment, but leaves the form of it to the good sense 
and personal preferences of those who are to live 
under it. 

All these things we have mentioned here belong 
to the works and ways of men ; they are good or 
bad as they serve the ends of his kingdom. Moses, 
though an inspired lawgiver, yet a mere man, gave 
many forms and prescribed the order of doing 
many things ; Jesus, the divine man, gave none. 

In nothing is Jesus more unlike men than in his 
utter disregard of ''forms" in the doing of the 
duties he enjoined. He has no word about forms 
except the terrible words he used concerning the 
many forms punctiliously observed by certain 
Pharisees and hypocrites who were playing at re- 
ligion. His life was full of worship, but he left not 
a hint as to any forms or attitudes for devotion. 
That simplest and most comprehensive of all 
prayers, '' Our Father, who art in heaven,'' is not a 
form ; he said, *' After this manner pray }^e." The 
prayer might take any form of words, or leave all 



Neither Theologian Nor Ecclesiastic, 113 

words unsaid. And this prayer he gave his disci- 
ples in response to a request for a form. Jesus had 
no forms ; he cared for none. 

Nor did Jesus care for the ^' letter," except as to 
the danger that good men might make a fetish of 
it. He said of the 'better, it killeth ; " '' the Spirit 
giveth life." The Spirit is every thing, the letter 
nothing. If we were to use of him the language 
that fits the case of a man we would feel like say- 
ing, Jesus looked upon punctilious eagerness about 
"forms" and the '' letter" as mere child's play, that 
he scorned such unspiritual folly. 

This is certain : the only thing he denounced in 
a tone that was almost anger was zealous adherence 
to the form and to the letter, and sanctimonious 
contentment with this poor substitute for religion 
when the spirit of worship and service was dead. 
It will be the plainer to us that his was very far 
from being a man's way when we remember that, 
with men, the less of spirit and reality an institu- 
tion has the more anxious they are about mere 
form and letter. A spiritually dead man will con- 
tend more zealously about the form of a duty than 
the duty itself. And this is not unnatural ; when 
a Church is dead there is nothing left but form — a 
body ready for burial. 

What terrific words Jesus used in what he said 



114 The Man of Galilee, 

of such things! Let us hear him and try to under- 
stand how much he means for us of to-day : 

** Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and 
cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of 
the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought 
ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 

*^ Ye blind guides, which strain out a gnat, and 
swallow a camel. 

** Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! for ye make clean the outside of the cup 
and of the platter, but within they are full of ex- 
tortion and excess. 

*^ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, 
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are 
within full of dead men's bones, and of all unclean- 
ness." 

Had Jesus been only a man, conceiving vast 
plans for propagating his doctrines and perpetuat- 
ing his kingdom, he would have done all the things 
he did not do. He would have relied on force, 
money, diplomacy, argument. He would have 
considered what human selfishness is, and he would 
have appealed to it. He would have provided in- 
stitutions and have founded schools. There would 
have been a ^' propaganda " compassing the world 



Neither Theologian Nor Ecclesiastic. 115 

in its plans, and his agents would have been drilled 
in forms and methods after the manner of men. 
He would, to have been at all like a man in his 
plans, have left a system of '^ethics" or ''theol- 
ogy." He would have formulated a '' creed " ; he 
would have drawn up a *' constitution " with '' by- 
laws '' for his Church, stating in terms every princi- 
ple and providing, according to the foresight given 
him, for every contingency, as did John Wesley 
with his Discipline and Legal Hundred. (Can it 
be necessary to say this illustration is no reflection 
upon the great and good English reformer, who 
was a mere man ?) He would have set for rigid 
observance forms and ceremonies of which he had 
none and prescribed none, not so much as telling 
men how they were to do in the matter of the 
sacraments-— baptism and the memorial supper. 

Mere men always do such things. Jesus did not 
adopt a man*s way in any of his work or plans, 
unless we except those who have learned of him 
something of the divine art of doing good to the 
souls and bodies of men. 



116 The Man of Galilee, 




CHAPTER XIIL 

JESUS CHRIST TOOK THE WAY OF PERISHING." 

F Jesus was only a man there is another 
marvelous thing you must have thought 
of before this time. He talked of a 
kingdom that was to endure forever, that was to 
conquer the world, and that was to bind the human 
race into a holy brotherhood ; but he made no prep- 
aration for a successor. He expected to die early, 
as he did ; he told his disciples, time and again, 
that he would not be with them long ; but he pro- 
vided for no representative or visible headship 
when he was gone. The idea of such a represent- 
ative did not occur in all his thoughts, as it was 
not intimated in any of his words. Napoleon 
shows us a man's way in his eager concern for a 
successor and in the cruel and wicked method he 
took to secure his ends. 

What Jesus did not ordain and require men may 
use in his work, if their methods be in themselves 
good, and consistent with the spirit of his kingdom. 
But what he did not require men must not demand 
of his free children. 



^^TooK THE Way of Perishing." 117 

So far as plans are concerned, of a sort recog- 
nizable by men as plans — of a sort they will admit 
who believe he was only a man — there was just 
one thing he did and commanded. He called 
about him a few fishermen and other plain people 
— of what are called by some the ^' lower classes " — 
and said in effect : " Go up and down through the 
earth and tell every body what you have seen me 
do and w^hat you have heard me say; tell the 
people of me ; tell them to go on repeating the 
story; tell them to hand it down through the ages, 
telling it over and over." 

These are the very words : ^* All power is given 
unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye there- 
fore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and 
lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." 

Mere men, undertaking great and perilous enter- 
prises, conceal from their followers the hardships 
and perils that await them ; they tell them of vic- 
tories and rewards. So did the Genoese, mustering 
a crew to help him find a new world. So all mere 
human leaders do. And no mere man in such a 
case ever yet clearly saw the difficulty and danger 



118 The Man of Galilee. 

of the undertaking; if men could see clearly the 
toils and tribulations between them and success 
they would never enter upon any great and haz- 
ardous enterprise. But Jesus saw all the antag- 
onisms that were in his path and, unlike any other 
leader that ever lived, told his disciples what await- 
ed them. In words like these he spoke to his 
disciples : 

** Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst 
of wolves : be ye therefore wise as serpents, and 
harmless as doves. But beware of men : for they 
will deliver you up to the councils, and they will 
scourge you in their synagogues ; and ye shall be 
brought before governors and kings for my sake, 
for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. . . . 
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's 
sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be 
saved. . , . The disciple is not above his master, 
nor the servant above his lord. If they have called 
the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more 
shall they call them of his household ? . . . He that 
taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not 
worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose 
it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it." • 

Let us think of all this. Such an end to accom- 
plish, such a plan, such a claim, such a promise ! 



''Took the Way of Perishing:' 119 

If Jesus was only a man this was lunacy, unless we 
should impeach his sincerity. 

Yet with perfect simplicity, perfect composure, 
perfect confidence, Jesus relies upon such a plan 
as this. It is not a man's way at all ; it is not 
only above and beyond a man's way, it is un- 
like it, foreign to it, and impossible to a mere 
man. 

How do men plan ? Read history ; look about 
you. It is easy to find out from books ; if you 
know how to read men it is easier to find out from 
observation. 

Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, among warriors 
and conquerors ; Richelieu, Macchiavelli, Jefferson, 
Hamilton, Disraeli, Bismarck, among statesman and 
the men who know state-craft ; the fathers and 
popes, Ignatius Loyola, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, 
among churchmen — these show us the methods of 
men. Studying the lives of those mentioned here 
and of others of their order we will find plans many 
and diverse — wise and foolish, good and bad — but 
they show a man's way. 

If you wish something more like a parallel con- 
sider the plans of those who fastened what is called 
Buddhism, or Confucianism, upon hundreds of mill- 
ions. Or consider Mohammedanism. In these sys- 
tems we see the handiwork of men. The authors 



120 The Man of Galilee, 

of these systems recognize the ordinary influences 
that determine men's conduct and use them with 
rare human skill. These employ agencies that 
Jesus repudiates ; they appeal to motives that he 
ignored ; offer inducements that he utterly denied ; 
these planned as men plan in all they did. What 
Pascal says, in effect, in comparing Christ and 
Mohammed, we may say of Christ and any other 
founder of a religion : '' If Mohammed took the 
way of succeeding, according to human calculations, 
Jesus Christ took the way of perishing, according 
to human calculations.'* 

Never did Jesus look to using the strongest 
drifts in human nature to secure his ends ; his 
ends required him to arrest and reverse these 
drifts. He w^as not ignorant of the forces locked 
up in human nature ; no man ever so deeply 
read the heart, so absolutely ^^ knew what was 
in man.'' As no other who ever taught men the 
truth Jesus knew the force of the torrent that 
bore down upon him — the Niagara his cause had 
to ascend. 

If Jesus was only a man how happened it that 
the methods he adopted are as unlike the methods 
of men as the end he sought is unlike the end that 
any man ever yet proposed to himself? How hap- 
pened it that in his plans he did every thing that a 



'''Took the Way of Perishing:' 1*21 

man would not do, and nothing — all history being 
witness — that a man would do ? 

These pages are not written for exhortation ; but 
would it not be better every way, for the cause they 
stand for, if his friends studied the plans of Jesus 
more and their own plans less ? 

Placing ourselves, in imagination, in the com- 
pany of those few faithful friends, men and women 
— who were of the humble and obscure people — 
among those who received his command to "' dis- 
ciple all nations,'' let us look about us and consider 
what are our prospects of success. 

What predominant influence in the world is 
friendly to the cause of our Lord and Master ? The 
only people who believe in the Lord God have 
crucified Jesus. The Romans are masters not only 
in the holy city but in all the world we know, and 
the Roman power has just sanctioned the death of 
Jesus. The Greeks still give philosophy and art to 
the world, but there is not among the Greeks sym- 
pathy with the teachings and work of Jesus. No 
people befriend his cause ; no hand is stretched 
out to his disciples; the world is against his cause, 
and for his sake against us, his disciples. 

Looking at it all as a man might, was there then 
a single human probability that the cause repre- 
sented by the crucified Galilean would have the 



122 The Man of Galilee, 

least place in history? That it would abide among 
men for a single generation? If Jesus was only a 
man could any thing conceivable by the human 
mind be more impossible than the realization of 
the dream (if he was only a man it was but a 
dream) of this man of Galilee, crucified like a 
felon ? 

No wonder certain men, while Jesus was yet 
among them, ^' laughed him to scorn/* 



His Grasp Upon Mankind, 123 




CHAPTER XIV. 

HIS GRASP UPON MANKIND. 

|0 far we have been studying the character 
and work of Jesus as he is presented in 
the evangeHsts, just as we might study 
any other character of that period. We have not 
yet considered Jesus as he now affects the world — 
a presence and force of our own times. 

When the scientists proved the indestructibihty 
of matter, when they discovered the doctrine of the 
conservation of energy, showing us how the coal 
measures, that warm millions of homes and drive 
the machinery of land and sea, are but stored-up 
sunbeams of untold ages gone, they showed us that 
through all her wonderful changes Nature loses 
none of her substance. In this splendid formulation 
of natural law the scientists have done a secondary 
but more important service ; they have given us a 
symbol from things material, an illustration of a 
law of the higher sphere. Nothing is ever lost in 
the spiritual world. 

A thought with life and truth in it, once set 
going, can no more be lost than a drop of water 



124 The Man of Galilee, 

falling on the fields can be lost. Professor Harrison, 
of England, is right in his doctrine of posthumous 
immortality, as far as it goes. He sees part of a 
truth and states it well. Whatever force there may 
be in any human life abides in human life. We 
may not be able to trace it, as we may not trace 
the identical dew-drop that glittered on the grass 
this morning and that, exhaled by the rising sun, 
has now disappeared from our vi.ew, but not from 
existence. 

It may well be that the influences that have con- 
spired in shaping our lives — in making us what we 
are to-day — have in some way come to us from 
many thousands of lives. In a true sense Moses, 
David, Paul, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, 
Bacon, Milton, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, with many 
others — our parents and teachers above all — all 
these, and, it may be, myriads more unnamable, 
live in us to-day. This is w^hat Froude meant 
when he wrote of Martin Luther, "No man of our 
times is what he would have been but for Luther.'* 
This is true because Luther's life so enters into the 
influences of our times that no man ever brought 
into relations v/ith him could escape that influence. 

And few have escaped it ; none of the European 
nations, none of the nations that have been 
brought into any sort of relations with Christianity 



ITis Grasp Upon Mankind, 125 

and the civilizations that have grown out of it ; 
few, if any, of what we call heathen nations; for the 
influences of Luther's life and doctrines are in the 
missionary movement of our times, that now prom- 
ises to do for these nations what the coming of 
Christianity did for Europe, Eastern Asia, and 
Northern Africa in the first centuries of our era — 
so changed them as to make a new epoch in history ; 
we might say, a new world. 

What is true of such a m.an as Luther is true in 
a measure — ^less extensive it may be, less real it 
cannot be — of every life that has gone before us, 
and that has, in any way, entered into our own. 

It would be easy to offer illustrations. Consider 
Francis Bacon — perhaps Roger Bacon still more — 
in relation to the scientific methods of our times. 
Think of Shakespeare, not in poetry only, but in all 
literature ; or of Kant, Spinoza, Locke, in philosophy ; 
Calvin, Wesley, and the re'st, in theology and moral 
reforms. Or think of the artists and inventors, the 
great soldiers and statesmen. You may easily 
make out a very long list of names of human lives 
that, going before us, now live in us. The list will 
show names that stand for diverse and antagonistic 
elements; but all these enter into our lives, just as, 
to return to our illustration from the world of 
waters, the water pure from the clouds, sparkling in 



126 The Man of Galilee, 

mountain springs, foul and reeking from swamps 
and all manner of ugly places, enters, it well may 
be, into the constituent elements of the dew-drop 
that reflects the sun upon each grass-blade in the 
fields. 

It is nothing peculiar to the life of Jesus of 
Nazareth that his influence should abide in human 
history. Every human life, the humblest and un- 
worthiest, so abides. But the influence of Jesus is 
different from that of other men. I am not now 
speaking of degree, but kind. As his method of 
thinking, of teaching; as the work he proposed to 
do and as the plans he adopted difference him from 
mere men, so does the history of the influence that 
flowed out from him into life and so made modern 
civilization, so does the character of his influence 
now difference him from men. 

It would carry us too far for the design of these 
discussions to enter now into the subject of the 
relation of Jesus to the history of his era. Our 
calendar intimates the extent and power of that 
influence ; we count time from his birth ; this is 
1889, ^- D' That influence has entered into what- 
ever has made the world of our times. The history 
of this influence is the history of the Christian era. 

We will consider the influence of Jesus, as it may 
be a matter of observation and consciousness. 



His Grasp Upon Mankind. 127 

Consider the power of the teachings of Jesus 
upon the human conscience. This is to me a 
growing wonder. Other men's words stimulate the 
conscience to a degree, but only when they echo 
his or approach harmony with them. This is so 
strangely true that no words of any teacher stir the 
conscience — except to protest — that antagonize and 
contradict Jesus. There is no risk of exaggeration 
or dogmatism here ; it is perfectly safe and per- 
fectly fair to say no doctrine of God or man, of 
rights and wrongs, that repudiates or denies what 
Jesus teaches, has any power over the human con- 
science. Other words and doctrines may quicken 
the intellect and dominate it ; may excite the 
imagination and stir the emotions; but if they are 
contrary to his doctrines and his life they have no 
grasp upon th^ moral side of man. 

It is easy to make the experiment and to make 
it conclusively. Read books that contradict his 
doctrines — that seek to overthrow them. If you 
read with candor I am not afraid for you to read 
what his fiercest enemies say. Take Voltaire, 
where he ridicules the Bible; Paine, in that very 
misnamed pamphlet, The Age of Reason ; Hume, 
in his speculations concerning providence, miracles, 
inspiration, and the whole agnostic literature of our 
day. These writings do not take hold upon the 



128 The Man of Galilee. 

conscience except as they may weaken or paralyze 
it ; they do not strengthen any purpose to do right, 
confirm any sense of personal obligation, invigorate 
any will for right doing. Make the experiment 
with any words of men that contradict or repudiate 
Jesus, the lightest and weightiest, the silliest and 
subtlest ; mere platform declamations or the sober 
scientific worship of materialism that knows no 
spirit — man, angel, or God. Do any of them stir 
our sense of obligation to high duty? Do any of 
them make our perception of duty clearer? Our 
love of virtue stronger? Our hatred of evil in- 
tenser? All who have made the experiment may 
answer for themselves. 

I do not say that only the words of Jesus take 
hold upon the conscience ; this would not be true. 
There are passages in Seneca, in Epictetus, in Soc- 
rates, in Plato, in Confucius, in the words of many 
ancient sages and modern teachers, that do stir the 
conscience. Your Shakespeare will furnish many 
illustrations. So will George Eliot, Hawthorne, 
and very many other writers. But these things I 
do say with perfect assurance : 

1. No words or teachings of any writer or teacher, 
of any age, that antagonize or repudiate the words 
of Jesus have power over the conscience. 

2, Those words and teachings of men who never 



His Grasp Upon Mankind, 129 

knew Jesus — as Socrates, Confucius, and other such 
men — that most affect the conscience are those 
words and teachings of theirs most in harmony with 
the doctrines and character of Jesus. All light is 
good, but that which is nearest sunlight is best. 

3. The words and teachings of those who do know 
Jesus, that most powerfully affect the conscience, 
are those that most perfectly echo his words. 

Furthermore, this is true : The words and teach- 
ings of Jesus not only stir the conscience as no 
others do; they illuminate the conscience. Others 
may affect the sensibility of conscience to a degree, 
but leave it in the shadows as to the very rights and 
wrongs of things. The words of Jesus — once their 
meaning is understood — as they apply to any con- 
crete case of rights and wrongs, not only awaken the 
sensibility of conscience so that the feeling of ob- 
ligation to do right and avoid wrong is most pro- 
nounced and unmistakable, but this also is true: 
the light which his words pour on the question in 
consideration makes transparent what the right thing 
is and what the wrong thing is. 

There is something here that defies analysis, 

something that will not be held in logic forms. 

Take any doctrine Jesus taught and exemplified. 

It may be about truth, honesty, chastity, charity. 

Read it, see what it means, apply it to your case, 
9 



130 The Man of Galilee, 

and conscience says, '^ Amen '* to it, and upon the 
instant. Conscience receives it as the reason receives 
an axiom. Given the facts, you need only to apply 
his tests, and that instant you not only suppose, 
not only think, you know what is your right and 
your wrong in the case. If there were no other 
reason, herein there is reason enough to follow the 
Man of Galilee wherever he leads. 

I urge upon you for your use in the tests that 
await you, as a method of finding out rights and 
wrongs and determining duty, what I have tried 
under many conditions of life and action ; a most 
simple principle of action — one that has never 
for one moment failed me or left me in doubt. 
It is worth more than all reasonings, than all books 
of casuistry, than all advices of friends ; nay, it is 
better than mere praying as if for some new light 
or other revelation than that which has come to 
enlighten every man that cometh into the world. 
It is to ask, '*What does Jesus teach here? What 
would he say if he were to speak? What would he 
do if this were his case? '' 
•* Blunders of judgment, many and grievous ; fail- 
ures in living up to the light that the Master gives, 
more grievous than any blunders of judgment — 
these things I confess to sorrowfully and with bitter 
shame ; but for the truth's sake, my conscience* sake, 



His Grasp Upon Mankind, 131 

and my Lord's sake, this much I must say, and I 
cannot say less : never have I asked, "• What would 
he do?'* but that the light has shined resplendent 
and all-revealing, and the right and the wrong stood 
out clear, sharp, as when electric lights shine about 
us, and I knew what I ought or ought not to do. 

At this point we may recur a moment to what 
was, in part, considered heretofore : the fullness, the 
completeness of his teachings difference him from 
all others. 

There is not in any other teacher such statement 
of principles that you cannot find outside their 
teachings one single ethical principle that they have 
not taught. Other teachers give us many principles 
of ethics ; does any of them give all? Jesus does, 
though he wrote no book and elaborated no system ; 
though we have but few of his words recorded. 
What I ask is this': Is there in any teacher of any 
nation one single principle of rights and wrongs 
that the suffrage of the race could approve, that 
Jesus does not teach ? Is there one single principle 
of Jesus as to rights and wrongs that the suffrage 
of good men can condemn as false? Men may, 
indeed, reject his teachings, and oppose them with 
bitterest hate, but which one of them — the least or 
the greatest — can they show to be immoral, wrong? 

As all colors are potentially contained in the pure 



132 The Man of Galilee, 

white light, and as the composition of all colors 
produces the pure white light, so the teachings of 
Jesus contain in principle all the forms of ethical 
truth that were ever in the minds of men. But 
here the analogy fails. All the ethical truth that all 
others have taught when brought together fails to 
make the sum total of his teachings; some colors 
are lacking in them ; together they do not make 
the pure white light of the gospels. 



What He Claims and Demands. 133 




CHAPTER XV, 

WHAT HE CLAIMS A:ND DEMANDS. 

|HERE is a fact, personal to Jesus, that 
not only enters vitally into this argument, 
but more than any thing else explains the 
power of his words on the conscience : what was 
considered in another relation in the outset — the 
perfection of his own character ; his sinlessness : his 
absolute purity. 

A perfect doctrine will no doubt affect the con- 
science, but a perfect doctrine uttered by one who 
lives a holy life has tenfold the power of the mere 
statement of doctrine. And it is not simply that 
the hearer recoils from a doctrine stated by an in- 
consistent or insincere man because he is inconsist- 
ent and insincere, but such a man cannot so much 
as utter the truth in its fullness ; he cannot conceive 
the truth in its completeness. 

When Jesus utters a truth it lays hold upon the 
conscience and life not simply because it is the 
truth, but because he is the " Truth and the Life.'' 
His conscience goes with the word and it enters 
into our conscience. It was this quality in him, 



134 The Man of Galilee, 

more than aught else, that led his hearers, when the 
Sermon on the Mount was ended, to ** wonder at 
his doctrine, for he taught them as one having 
authority." It is living a truth more than learning 
about a truth that gives the teacher authority. 

An illustrative incident may help us here. The 
late Mr. Wray was a Baptist missionary in India. 
He was a man of known consistency of religious 
character. A child who knew him well was asked 
the question : '' What is holiness ? " A man would 
have done as so many do with lamentable failure, 
attempted a ''definition;'' the child answered: 
*' Holiness is the way Mr. Wray lives.*' The child 
was nearly, if not quite, at the bottom of the 
subject. 

The learner in the school of Jesus may find here 
a truth of first importance. It is twofold : i. The 
best way to learn more truth is to live the truth he 
does know. 2. The only way to rightly teach any 
truth in morals, in things spiritual, is to live it. 
^Religion, like science, believes in experiment and 
teaches by facts. The incarnate truth is the truth 
that has life in it. It is said with reverence, but 
with confidence, Jesus teaches what spiritual life 
is more by living it than by his words. His life ex- 
pounds his doctrine, and without his life we could 
not understand his teachings. 



What He Claims and Demands. 135 

Try the principle by any test of him. For 
example, he teaches us that forgiveness is a duty 
and that revenge is a sin. What does he mean ? 
What he did. You remember his last prayer: 
** Father, forgive them ; they know not what they 
do." He teaches us to love our enemies. What 
does he mean ? What he did ; always blessing them 
when he could. He teaches that we best serve God 
by doing good to men, and that the best proof and 
only proof of loving God is in loving men. What 
does he mean? What he did. He was always 
doing good. And so his life expounds his teach- 
ings, and is the one safe and true commentary upon 
his words. 

Contemplate that life for a moment. Begin at 
Bethlehem and follow him to Bethany, where, it is 
said, he ascended to heaven. That life is blame- 
less, flawless. He did not lack abuse, denunciation, 
defamation, persecutions. Men called him a drunk- 
ard and a glutton because he was not an ascetic ; 
they said he *^ had a devil " because they could not 
understand how any man would do a thing only be- 
cause it was right. Some called him a lunatic ; '^ he 
is beside himself,'* they said, because he was un- 
worldly, was what they considered ''' unbusiness- 
like,*' because they, with their selfishness and pride, 
could not imagine themselves living as he did unless 



136 The Man of Galilee, 

they had lost their reason. Many hated him then, 
as they do now, because he was, as he is, in the way 
of their self-seeking and their sins. Bad men can- 
not be at rest where he is. 

No wonder the perfect teaching of a blameless 
man has power upon the human conscience. To 
this hour good men indorse Pilate's verdict ; bad 
men can find no error in it. 

When we look more closely into his innermost 
character we will find qualities that difference him 
from mere men broadly and unmistakably. We 
see in him no fault that we can name as attaching 
to his life ; but we do see in him two manifestations 
of all others most marvelous and out of the range 
of mere human life. i. There does not appear in 
him any, the very least, consciousness of fault. 2. 
In bis religion there is no effort. 

Now these things appear in no others who are 
sincere — who know what they are and w^hat good- 
ness is. The best men and women are conscious of 
faults, and the best are most conscious of them. If 
a man should say, ** I am faultless,'* we would ques- 
tion his sincerity, his sanity, or his knowledge of 
words, or his conception of goodness. And w^e 
would be right. No sane man, with any high ideal 
of goodness and knowing the meaning of words, ever 
yet used of himself words that fit only Jesus. 



What He Claims and Demands. 137 

It IS like a true artist's ideal : the better artist he 
is the less he satisfies his own conception in what 
he does; so in religion, the saintliest most realize 
the distance between them and the Christ. An 
unbeliever has said that Mary at the sepulcher 
idealized him, and so made Christianity possible ! 
He supposed he had accounted for the most stu- 
pendous fact of all time. Why is it that only Jesus 
has become the highest ideal that ever filled the 
human soul? That nineteen centuries have added 
nothing to him — taken nothing from him ? 

As to men, religion is war with nature. Saint 
Paul so teaches us. It was his experience ; the 
holiest men best understand this and most frankly 
confess it. PauFs writings are full of terms that 
illustrate religion from agonistic struggles. When 
Jesus himself urges men to seek the life of religion 
he says, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate.'' The 
word translated strive is the Greek form of our word 
of pain and conflict — agonize. 

But the religion of Jesus was effortless ; there was 
never in his heart antagonism to goodness. His 
religion shines like the sun because it is full of light; 
it is agoing forth from fountains that, in his inmost 
soul, were in spontaneous and perpetual play. He 
did have conflicts, but with the evil that was with- 
out him ; there was none in him. 



138 The Man of Galilee, 

The story of his temptation does not at all mil- 
itate against this statement. The force of the attack 
from without he felt, for it is said, ^' He suffered, 
being tempted." But when we read the story we 
feel that it was not only right for him to resist, but 
natural. We see so clearly that we never doubt ; 
there is in him nothing in sympathy with the evil 
to which he was solicited. 

What does Jesus say of himself as to these things? 
What does he claim for himself.^ He says to Pilate, 
*T am the truth f * and it does not shock us to hear 
him say this. He says in one place, ^' I do always 
the will of my Father ; *' and we believe him — not 
only that he thinks he does, but that he does. In 
trying to give to his disciples the one true ideal of 
humanity he says, *' Be ye therefore perfect, even 
as your Father in heaven is perfect.'' Then he 
offers himself as an example to the humaii race, and 
we are satisfied that he is what he says, for we can 
*^ find no fault in him." And with it all we recog- 
nize perfect sincerity, simplicity, humility. If a mere 
man were to say such things to us we would despise 
him ; the scorn of the world would drive him from 
the presence of men. But he says such things and 
we feel that it is right ; it is the truth ; he is what 
he says. 

In the same way we feel that he is entitled to 



What Be Claims and Demands, 139 

make upon us the most tremendous claims for 
human service, devotion, and love ever put into 
words. He says, ^* If any man will be my disciple, 
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and 
follow me/* '' He that loveth father or mother more 
than me is not worthy of me/' All must be in 
abeyance to his will. We are to forsake lands, 
homes, parents, children, wives, all for him. Noth- 
ing in the universe must come between him and the 
loyal, all-sacrificing love of his disciples. He must 
be first in our hearts ; whatever comes between him 
and our love forfeits all claim upon him. If a mere 
man made these demands the world would despise 
him, and the world would be right. 

But he sets up other claims of a sort no sincere 
and sane man, who is only a man, can think of 
for a moment. He claims the right to forgive sins. 
His critics were right — assuming him to be only a 
man. ^*Why does this man thus speak blas- 
phemies? Who can forgive sins but God only? *' 

He not only claims, as no other prophet ever 
did, to represent the eternal Father, but he claims 
a perfect knowledge of God that no mere man can 
claim. " All things are delivered unto me of my 
Father ; and no man knoweth the Son but the 
Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father save 
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 



140 The Man of Galilee, 

him/' The night before he died he said to his dis- 
ciples : *' Let not your heart be troubled : ye be- 
lieve in God, believe also in me." 

He says in many ways and in many places that 
he is, in origin and character, more than a man ; 
that he is supernatural. He says, ** I and my 
Father are one.'* He says that he is divine — that 
he is God. 

If Jesus was only a man such claims cannot 
be reconciled with his sanity or his sincerity. Au- 
gustine was right when he reduced this argument 
to its last analysis : *' Christus, si non deus, non 
bonus'' — Christ, if he be not God, is not good. 



Jesus the One Universal Character. 141 



7S 



CHAPTER XVL 

JESUS THE ONE UNIVERSAL CHARACTER. 

[N considering Jesus as he is now in the 
world, not in the story of the evangelists 
and in books simply, but in human life, 
there are other views to be taken. We can take 
views only ; we cannot see all that they indicate. 

We must consider more carefully now what we 
looked at for a moment in the argument that com- 
pels us to believe that this character could not have 
been invented, and that such a personality could 
not have been a normal outgrowth of Hebrew life : 
Jesus is a universal character — the one and only 
universal character that has ever appeared in his- 
tory, that has ever been described, that has ever 
had a place in human thought. 

There are great differences in men. Some are so 
narrow and meager of soul as scarcely to have a 
thought or sympathy beyond the little circle in 
which they are born, in which they live, and out of 
which they go utterly when they die. There are 
lives so localized that men out of their sphere they 
cannot understand, and that men out of their 



142 The Man of Galilee. 

sphere cannot understand them. For every limited 
dialect in human speech there are limited thoughts 
and lives back of it. What do we mean by 
*' provincialism *' as applied to a man, or to the peo- 
ple of a State or country ? It means limitation. 
Illustrations are every-where. Take a Scotch 
Highlander, an Irishman of some seldom-visited 
farming region, or, in our own country, a New 
Englander born and bred, never from home ; or a 
village Georgian, a thorough-going old time South- 
erner. These men are provincial. They may have 
admirable and indeed noble qualities, but they are 
limited in their views, narrow in their sympathies, 
and by so much they are cut off from the sympa- 
thies of their fellow-men of other conditions in life. 
Savage people show us the extremes of provin- 
cialism. 

But let us take now our illustration from the 
loftiest ranges of life. Among the ancients take 
Plato — broad-minded as any. What is he ? Gre- 
cian to the core. There was no greater Roman 
than Julius Caesar. But he was essentially Roman ; 
he was localized by race and country ; there was 
much in him that only a Roman could understand, 
and therefore much that limited him in his knowl- 
edge of the men of other nations. 

Come to more modern times. Only a few years 



Jesus the One Universal Character, 143 

ago the Protestant world celebrated the four hun- 
dredth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther. 
There was enough in Luther to perpetuate his 
influence through many generations. In every 
nation where the effect of the Lutheran reforma- 
tion is felt there was real interest in the celebration 
of the anniversary of the great German's birth. 
There was sympathy with Luther ; moreover, more 
or less understanding of him. There was enough 
forceful life in Luther to overflow Germany and en- 
rich other lands ; yet he was a German, and so not 
a universal, but a limited, character. And so it is 
that he means more to Germany than to England, 
or France, or America. It is not simply that Ger- 
mans are more interested in him as a patriotic 
sentiment growing out of national pride in their 
greatest man; they understand him better than 
other people can. If he could come back to the 
world he would understand Germans better than 
he would other people. 

Among great men in civil life take American 
Washington. Great man though he was, and hav- 
ing in him qualities that all true men recognize 
and approve, he was yet essentially American. He 
was also essentially Virginian, and plantation- 
aristocratic Virginian of his time, and no other. 

Take English Gladstone, of living men. Broad- 



144 The Man of Galilee. 

minded, well-informed, ripe in wisdom, rich in 
learning, all-accomplished, he is, it may well be 
supposed, second to no man of our times in great- 
ness of heart and range of sympathies. But he is 
English ; there is much in him that no foreigner 
can fully understand, and there is much in any 
foreigner that Gladstone cannot understand. 

Take one more illustration — the man we call 
** myriad-minded " — the prince of poets, the king of 
dramatists, William Shakespeare. He could, I 
think, put himself into the consciousness of a man 
of a different nation as fully as any man who ever 
wrote. He is as nearly as one can be *^ poet of the 
human race.'' But it is a mere commonplace of 
literature to say that many of the best thoughts in 
his great dramas cannot bear translation into for- 
eign tongues ; just as the finest oranges that grow, 
as travelers tell us, a variety grown in Brazil, can- 
not bear transportation to other countries. If it 
be said this is a language difficulty, this itself im- 
plies the limitation that goes with mere men. But 
this does not explain the difficulty of translation 
altogether ; it is in the limitations that characterize 
men. No foreigner can rightly understand Shake- 
speare, who was English. 

It has been said by some writer : *'* Shakespeare 
dramatized the sixteenth century Englishman." 



Jesus the One Universal Character. 145 

He wrote of others ; he dramatized the English- 
man of his time. He knew him. He did not dram- 
atize the sixteenth century man. There is no char- 
acter who can be at home in every country ; who 
can stand for the race. Still less did he dramatize 
the nineteenth century man ; genius is not equal 
to such a forecast. For mere men are not only 
localized in thought, sympathy, and character, by 
place, they are, if possible, still more limited by 
time ; the influences that Vv^ent before them and 
shut them in while they lived. 

But what do we find when we consider Jesus of 
Nazareth in respect to time and place, blood and 
country, education and language ? This : we do 
not at all think of him, though we use the words, as 
Jesus of Nazareth. We do not think of him as a 
Jew — as an Asiatic even. The Galilean, the Jew, 
the Asiatic is lost in the man. Circumstances left 
no such impress upon Jesus as to localize him — as 
to limit his sympathy — as to mar in the least his 
all-round, harmonious, perfect humanity. 

If translators have thorough language-knowledge 

the words of Jesus bear translation as no words of 

men bear it. I do not believe that his thoughts 

lose any thing, any flavor, any color, by being 

translated. Where they are properly translated his 

thoughts mean to an American what they meant 
10 



146 The Man of Galilee. 

to the people who first heard him speak. They 
produce in men of different races and tongues the 
same thoughts, excite the same convictions, stir 
the same sympathies, and lead to the same conclu- 
sions about rights, and wrongs, and duties, in every 
language that has ever repeated them. When 
these words of Jesus are obeyed they produce the 
same essential characteristics alike in men of ev- 
ery nation, the most enlightened and the most 
savage. It does not depend on race, or heredity, 
or environment ; the results in character of receiv- 
ing and living the Gospel are the same always and 
every-where. Whether Greek, or Roman, or Scyth- 
ian, or Hebrew in the early days of Christianity ; 
whether Caucasian, Asiatic, African to-day, the 
the man who follows the Christ is transformed into 
his likeness. No soil, no climate, no time changes 
the fruit of this tree. 

Above all, and least like any mere man, not only 
do his words mean to us what they meant to his 
first disciples ; he means as much to us. He is to a 
sinful and penitent woman of our times just what 
he was to that Mary who kissed his feet in the 
house of the proud Pharisee. He is to any vile 
wretch who needs and wants him just what he was 
to the man full of leprosy, or to him of Gadara. 
To Marys and Marthas weeping their dead to-day 



Jesus the One Universal Character, IIT 

he means just as much as to the sisters of Bethany. 
All this agrees with what he said of himself as 
^' the Son of man." Did any other ever have such 
a conception of himself, of the human race, and of 
his relation to it ? Not one word, not one act of 
his is shut up to his time or race. Jesus is "" the Son 
of man ;'' the ideal and universal man, the represent- 
ative man of the entire race, the brother of every 
man, woman, and child in the world ; loving all and 
adoringly lovable by all. 



148 The Man of Galilee. 




CHAPTER XVIL 

THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD. 

HAT has been set forth concerning the 
power of the teachings of Jesus to stir 
and stimulate and enlighten the con- 
science ; what has been said of his own character 
and life as incarnating, and thereby expounding, 
making clear and enforcing, his doctrine ; what has 
been suggested concerning the absolute universality 
of his character, making him brother to every hu- 
man being and therefore as much to one as to 
another, all this brings us to speak briefly of a 
wonderful but very common fact of daily observa- 
tion and experience, a fact that cannot be dissev- 
ered from the character, nature, and personality of 
Jesus himself: the effect of his doctrines and of 
himself upon men. 

It is not meant that all who are called Christians 
show these results ; that all who are Christians 
show all these results ; that any man or woman who 
ever was called Christian has shown all the results 
possible to humanity as the natural sequence of re- 
ceiving fully the doctrine of Jesus and living up to 



The Christ, the Son of God, 149 

it. No more than I will plead for counterfeit coins ; 
no more than I would say that all coins that have 
pure gold in them are of full weight and without 
alloy of baser metal. But this I do say : we do 
find, and always find, in those who receive and 
obey the teachings of Jesus the results he pointed 
out as following their reception; that the results 
follow in proportion to the thoroughness with 
which these teachings are observed ; that those 
who best keep them become most like him, the 
one blameless and perfect Man. 

We will not enter into any theological discus- 
sions ; we do not touch the metaphysics of the 
subject ; but this may be affirmed roundly and with- 
out qualification : those who believe and receive and 
obey his words are not only changed in their man- 
ner of life, they are, so far as we can have any 
means of judging men, changed in their spirit of 
life. So it does come to pass in those who keep 
his words ; old things become new, not only in the 
sphere of action, but also in the sphere of thinking, 
feeling, willing. 

As it seems to me, there can be nothing in this 
world harder to do than to change, not men's external 
lives merely, but men themselves. Changing men's 
hearts is like making worlds. 

Who else who ever taught, lived, or died, does 



150 The Man of Galilee, 

this? Does this while among men? Does this, 
being for nearly two thousand years gone out of 
the sight and hearing of men? But Jesus works 
this miracle now, and in men of all races and con- 
ditions, civilized and savage, learned and unlearned. 
And their number is as the sands by the sea-shore, 
and as the stars of heaven for multitude. 

Candid thinkers in accounting for Jesus — in char- 
acterizing and classifying him — must take account 
of the effects produced in human character, as well 
as in human lives, and in human lives because in 
human character. 

The men of science tell us we must take account 
of facts in forming our conclusions; and they are 
right. It Vv'as Jesus who taught this principle long 
before Bacon ; '' By their fruits ye shall know them.'* 
In studying Jesus we must take account of those 
facts in human life which seem to be connected 
with him. 

We have spoken of the change in character — call 
it by any name or none — that follows obedience to 
Jesus. In this connection there is another most 
wonderful thing to be considered. What I am to 
mention now is, on the mere grounds of common 
sense and worldly reasoning, the most marvelous 
and inexplicable of all facts observed among men 
in relation to any being not with them in visible, 



The Christ, the Son of God. 151 

tangible form ; I refer to the matchless love his true 
disciples feel toward him, not as a teacher, but as a 

person. 

None can deny it. Who, if Jesus was only a 

man, can explain it ? 

No man who knows history, or the world to-day, 
will doubt for one moment that millions on millions 
of human beings— men, women, and little children- 
have felt and shown for the person of Jesus the 
most absorbing love ; a love that drove out all fear 
and mastered every other love. Some great teach- 
ers and leaders while they were yet in the flesh 
have had followers and friends who loved them 
well enough to hazard life for them and to die 
for them. We can understand the soldier who, 
on one occasion, when a shell fell close by the first 
Napoleon, while it was just exploding flung him- 
self between the fatal bomb and his loved chief, and 
throwing his arms about him died in his stead. But 
when Napoleon was an exile in St. Helena he com- 
plained one day that, among all those he had be- 
friended in the days of his power, there were none 
to draw sword for him when he was an exile. Who 
would die for Napoleon now ? 

There have been thinkers, poets, orators, philos- 
ophers, who have enthusiastic admirers who con- 
tend for them in the pretty war of words. Shakes- 



152 The Man of Galilee, 

peare has as many such admirers as the foremost in 
all the world. But who loves him — the man — in any 
such deep, absorbing fashion as untold millions have 
loved and do now love the Man — Jesus of Nazareth? 
■ It surprises you to hear such a question. If Jesus 
was only a man the question should not surprise. 
How does it come about that such love as the great 
army of martyrs and confessors have shown was 
never felt for any except this Galilean peasant ? 

There is not now, there never was such love for 
Buddha or Mohammed. Such love was never pro- 
fessed for the founders of Buddhism or Moham- 
medanism. Such love was never felt for any per- 
son long gone from the midst of men. 

This love is not like the fanaticism that fights for 
one's own idea ; it is the love of a person for a per- 
son. This love for Jesus has shown itself to be the 
master love that ever held sway in the human heart. 
For this love all other loves have been given up — 
have been crucified. 

Do men and women, in their senses, give their 
strength and life-long service for any other name? 
Die cheerfully for any other name? Die for one 
long gone away from them — gone out of the world 
and, so far as sense and reason know, gone forever? 
But neither lapse of centuries, distance by separat- 
ing seas, distances unknown between this world 



The Christ, the Son of God, 153 

and the world men do not know, or separation by 
differences of race, cools this love. What the mar- 
tyrs did in Jerusalem they soon afterward did in 
Rome, in Alexandria, in every city and country of 
that age and that part of the world. They did the 
same thing — died with songs on their lips for this 
Man of Galilee — in after centuries. So did they in 
the Middle Ages in every country of Europe. So 
they have done in our own time in that great island, 
Madagascar, that has shown in the dark sons of the 
tropics, whose fathers were heathen idolaters, the 
overmastering love of men, women, and children, 
for the Jesus they had never seen ; who lived on 
the other side of the world from them, and taught 
men how to be saved nearly two thousand years 
ago. They died in Madagascar as they died in 
Rome, ^* the love of Christ constraining them." 

And the best people in the world to-day would 
so die for him in every country where his word has 
gone. And this love grows fuller and stronger ; 
Jesus is more in the thoughts and love of men than 
he ever was before. 

If you would in some sense realize the wonder of 
which we are now speaking, try to imagine such a 
passion coming into the hearts of millions of men 
to-day as would impel them to die with rejoicings 
for Socrates, or any other born of woman, save the 



154 The Man of Galilee, 

Man who was once a carpenter in Joseph's shop in 
Nazareth of Galilee. You cannot imagine such a 
thing. As to Jesus, and love for him, it is not left 
to imagination ; we have history. And we know a 
great multitude who would gladly die for Jesus 
now if to them should come the martyr's test. 

When Jesus disappeared from the sight of men 
there was not a human probability that his name 
would be other than a reproach, till, like any 
common felon — like the forgotten thieves between 
whom he died — his name and fate should drop out 
of the memory of men. Humanly speaking, it was 
certain that he would never have a solitary fol- 
lower. No sane man, reckoning on the ordinary 
probabilities of human motives and action, could 
have conceived the possibility of a vast body of 
disciples, ever growing, and pushing on his con- 
quests round the world, holding together through 
passing centuries, enduring all manner of opposition 
and bitter persecution, and now, in this year 1889, 
the master-force of the world ; a force that, beyond 
all cavil, is now the most active, aggressive, and 
revolutionizing influence ever set going among men. 

It could not have been conceived ; every domi- 
nant power of the world was arrayed against him; 
there was not a star shining for Jesus if he was 
only a man. 



The Christ, the Son of God. 155 

But Jesus crucified lives on. Around his cross 
has been the battle-ground of the ages. All that 
human skill and bitter hate could do has been done 
to put out the light he kindled on Calvary. But he 
lives on — lives in men to-day; single-handed he 
goes on his conquering way. His servants, because 
they love him, are pushing his cause in every 
nation under heaven. As in the old days, in the 
lands that bordered the Mediterranean, so now 
among the great pagan nations — in India, China, 
Japan, Africa, and in the islands of the sea, they are 
telling the story he commanded them to repeat till 
he should come again. And, telling it, they are 
now, as in the days of his first apostles, '' turning 
the world upside down.'' 

In every land his children are building up his 
kingdom. They die for him, and others take their 
places; and so the work begun in Jerusalem never 
ceases. History confirms his promise, ^' I am with 
you alway, even unto the end of the world.'* 

Such a character could not have been conceived 
had not such a life been lived ; such a life could not 
have sprung out of Hebrew soil; no mere man ever 
knew the deepest truths without investigation or 
taught them without proving them ; no mere man 
ever conceived of such a work as Jesus proposed to 
himself, and no mere man would have adopted the 



156 The Man of Galilee. 

methods Jesus used ; no mere man ever conceived 
so vast an undertaking as the moral conquest of 
the race ; no mere man ever took such masterful 
hold upon the conscience, love, and will of mankind. 

What Simon Peter said stands to-day as the faith 
of the Church: ''Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God/* The great words of St. John 
stand firm as the teaching of Scripture and the 
verdict both of reason and history: ''The Word was 
with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the 
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we 
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten 
of the Father,) full of grace and truth.'' 

The facts of his humanity and of his work and 
influence in the world forbid us to classify Jesus 
with men, and the recognition of his divinity alone 
explains the facts of his humanity. Considered as 
God-man all is in harmony; miracles take their 
proper place in the records of his history, and mind 
and nature, heaven and earth, God and man meet 
in Jesus, the Christ. 

But — if he be only a man — he is such a man as 
were a thousand times worth dying for and follow- 
ing forever, through time and eternity. 



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^1 



